


Dead Men Feed the Fish

by aerys



Category: Love Victor (TV 2020)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fantasy, Happy Ending, Historical, Historical Fantasy, Historical References, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean, Internalized Homophobia, Light BDSM, M/M, Magical Realism, POV First Person, Pirates, Power Play, Romance, Rough Kissing, Roughness, Sensuality, Sexual Tension, Suggestive Themes, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-02
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 63,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27340222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerys/pseuds/aerys
Summary: Benjamin Campbell wants out of his life; Victor Salazar just wants off this ship. The two become unlikely allies -- and maybe something more.(Venji Pirate AU; loosely inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean)
Relationships: Andrew Spencer/Felix Weston, Benjamin "Benji" Campbell & Victor Salazar, Benjamin "Benji" Campbell/Victor Salazar, Mia Brooks/Lake Meriwether
Comments: 162
Kudos: 27





	1. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 5 May, 1787; Port Royal, Jamaica, British Empire

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all, hope you're well. First off, I want to give a bit of a warning. I tagged this accordingly because there are mentions of sexual violence and the threat of said violence, but it doesn't happen onscreen. It's labeled that way because I don't want anyone to read this and be shocked by something they didn't sign up for. I also tagged it with homophobic language/internalized homophobia because even though we don't use a lot of the language in this story, it was a reality of the time, and people weren't accepting of LGBT+ people at the time so I don't want people to be upset by the content. This is a story about pirates, and so all types of violence can happen and while I won't write about it all explicitly, it would be inaccurate for it to not come up at all. I did do a fair amount of research but it's also not infallible.
> 
> Anyway! This is my NaNoWriMo project for this year. It's going to be a dual present tense 1st person pov alternating between Benji and Victor and it's my first time trying this style out so I hope it's readable and you enjoy the story.

If I had been any other man but myself, a faceless, nameless man who cast no shadow upon the earth as he walked, perhaps I would continue on my way, feet planted firmly on the ground where they belong.

Disgrace to the family’s good name, sodomite, molly, hang in chains. Each word lost its thorns after a few hundred times repeated. I’ve heard that and more from my own blood and from enemies alike. They would all be happy to see me strung up. And yet because of that blood that runs acrid through my veins, blood that marks me as part of a clan that I wish I could drain myself of, my body exchanged the solid ground for the tumult of the sea.

“This one’s a pretty one, aye?” one of the men says, his face sunburnt and grimy, as if he hadn’t bathed for weeks.

The iron chains clamp around my wrists tightly enough to gnaw into flesh and scratch against bone. If I cease my movements it would ease the pain, but I’d never been one to stay still. One of the hulking, lumbering beasts grabs me by my hair, using his strength to shove me across the shaking wooden deck as I attempt to retain my balance, almost tripping in the process. The smell of salt and alcohol and filth pervades the air and I resist the urge to vomit where I stand.

“He’s expensive. Admiral’s son. Do what you want with him but don’t touch his face, savvy?” another one of the men says, his face overgrown with hair to the point where he appears to have sewn a lamb to his lips.

“Lucky for you, we aren’t sodomites like the rest, but I’m sure you would have liked that better,” the one shoving me across the deck says, and I shift in his grip, wanting nothing more than to pull away and spit in his face. You can never kill a man’s urge to pillage what he believes is his. He pushes me forward again. 

“Walk.”

As he leads me to the entrance to the interior of the ship, he all but throws me down the wooden stairs, seeming to have forgotten or simply ignored the order he had received a moment before. I stumble until I reach about halfway down before slipping and falling face-first down the last few. I groan, unable to breathe, the wind knocked from my lungs, but grateful for the moment that my hands, bound before me, break my fall. 

I wiggle my fingers, and they move accordingly. My eyes, which shut tightly, open slowly and I blink several times. Atop the staircase, the lock slides closed.

Another group of filthy, wretched men await me below deck. One picks me up by the hair again as if he wishes to scalp me, and brings me to my feet. The one that stands before me grins a horrible pointed grin, and for a moment, the light changes and I see two shining, needle-like horns jutting from his skull. In that moment I realize they can beat me, rape me, and perform possibly even more heinous things to me so long as I remain intact, but I know they won’t kill me because I’m of more value alive than dead; it doesn’t mean they won’t make my life a living hell.

From through the square bars of the cells, across the way from me, I see a bespectacled brown face. A young man with short cropped hair wearing a habit watches me from a distance, eyes darting between the men and my face. I observe him curiously before my attention pulls back to the men surrounding me as they seem to encroach upon me further. My jaw clenches. I have nothing to say to them.

“Brothers…” came the voice from behind the claustrophobic group that surround me. The young man approached, shoving them aside. He furrows his brows, giving me a strange look, before he takes me by the arm and announces: “Let me prove myself to you and attend to the prisoner.”

They murmur amongst each other for a moment and I can’t help but glare at him. His touch is gentle as he pulls me away from them. I don’t understand what he wants from me, but the way he eyes me up and down from the corner of his eye makes me wonder if we’re the same. 

“Captain said the sodomite is ours,” one of the fellows said, this one large and egg-shaped with a bald head to match. The priest’s eyes widen.

“Tell the captain that I want to show my worth and become a… proper pirate. That I am not simply some… useless priest, whose only skill is reading the Bible. _Please._ ”

Why is he going through all this trouble?

I watch as one of the men moves, and the priest flinches. Even in his habit, he looks emaciated in comparison to the three men, who could easily lift both of us and toss us like clumps of leaves into the harbor.

“Aye, you’ve made a convincing argument,” egg-man finally concedes.

He brings his knee up to my already bruised ribs again just for good measure and I slump to the floor as the trio leaves, chuckling amongst themselves with their booming laughs that sound like canon shots. Unable to breathe again, I scramble against the wood with my bound limbs, splinters plunging themselves into my fingertips.

A pair of hands wrap around my arms and lift me from the ground before I feel a weight pressing against my side. The tears pricking at the corners of my eyes do nothing to quell the heat of shame that washes over me that mixes with the dull, throbbing pain in my sternum. 

For a moment the silence envelops me, and all I can feel is the gentle warmth of what I could only consider an embrace as I right myself, the soft moan of pain floating from my lips. The men had gone, and only I and the priest remain.

“I will not harm you,” the priest says. “I would take you to my quarters but… they would ask too many questions.”

I swallow before my raspy voice exits my lungs. “Why are you helping me?”

The priest glances around before he speaks. “These men are evil. They killed my friends and many innocent people. I have no love for the Crown but… pillaging and… whatever they want to do to you is not the answer.”

“You lied to them,” I say.

“If I had left you alone with them you would want to find a way to off yourself,” he says.

Too late. But I suppose this is a better alternative.

“Thank you,” I say instead. 

“I will need to put you in a cell later and I do not have the key for shackles unfortunately, but… sit for now. Let me examine your injuries,” he says.

All I can do is nod, and so he leads me to one of the ledges and sets me down. 

“Are you a physician as well?” I ask as he lifts my bound arms up and my white shirt as well. 

Perhaps it is but a trick of the light, or perhaps my own imagination wishing it so, but as he moves closer to me, pressing against the bruise in the middle of my chest as I hiss in pain, I can see the faintest tinge of pink melding with his brown complexion, and I can’t help but smile despite the adrenaline now shooting through my blood vessels. When I blink, it’s gone.

“We learned about medicine and anatomy at the monastery, so I could become a physician if I chose to. But it appears that nothing is broken, only bruised,” he says, clearing his throat as he lets my shirt fall back in place. “In a few days, it should heal.”

I sigh. He watches me for a moment before sitting on the ledge beside me. 

“What are you called, by the way?” I ask him, and he raises an eyebrow.

“Oh… I am Victor Salazar. And you?” 

“Benjamin Campbell. But call me Benji. I don’t want to associate with my father or my family anymore, and I can assure you they would be better off that way.”

“Ah… like the admiral,” he says, face twisting between a smile and a grimace. “I have… heard of him.”

“Nothing good, I imagine.”

“No,” Victor says with a laugh. “But I cannot judge you for the sins of your father.”

“Then judge me by my own sins,” I say with a shrug. “I’ve got plenty.”

“Only God can judge you,” he corrects himself, “although the more I learn about him, the less I believe he has the right to judge anyone at all.”

A bold statement from a priest. He is… different from what I imagined him to be. An alleged man of god… 

“What would you say if I told you… that when they called me a sodomite they weren’t just saying it? It’s… actually true,” I say, staring at my bloodied, chafed hands. That’s how I ended up on this ship, after all.

“Oh,” Victor says, looking away and off somewhere else. 

I look to him, unable to read his expression aside from what looks like the smallest, faintest shadow of a smile. 

He returns his gaze to me but says nothing more. The rocking of the ship soon grows more rapid and violent, my body beginning to slide across the ledge. I gaze out the window to see the port fading into the background, the people milling about shrinking to ants before disappearing, becoming a part of the tapestry of the sky. With each movement through the waves, the shards of blue water from the shining Caribbean splash into the ship, the salty liquid irritating my open skin. 

I’d entertained the idea of going to sea, to exchange the dependability of the land with the uncertainty and freedom of the open seas, but not like this. If I’d been another man, a man of lesser import, a commoner, perhaps I’d have remained ashore, content to live out the rest of my days without any grander desires. 

Perhaps my father’s blood is good for something. 


	2. Victor Salazar - 5 May, 1787; Port Royal, Jamaica, British Empire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor suggests a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I quirk an eyebrow at him. “What do you find frightening about him?”
> 
> “The entire British Navy’ll be after us in no time, is what’s frightenin’. I ‘aven’t seen the fellow ‘imself, though, but from what I ‘ear of ‘im… I wouldn’t wanna go near ‘im. Either ‘e puts a knife in ye or ‘e seduces ye, there’s no in between,” Lucas replies, opening the oven behind him and shoving the ball of dough into it before shutting the door.

I had to put the prisoner in his cell, for if someone were to pass by and see us conversing like two old friends, they would ask questions. Too many questions. And if they look too closely at my face, they will see a liar. While I may have learned quickly how to lie to preserve my own skin, to keep their knives away from my neck, I fear that one day my facade will slip, and thus, so will the knife.

Not “the prisoner”. Benjamin. Or Benji, as he asked to be called. A name that sounds curious and strange on my tongue. But somehow tastes of sugarcane, so sweet it almost frightens me. 

As I sit on the ledge, reading my book about botany, recalling the medicinal herbs I carry with me and their uses -- arnica for inflammation, lemon balm to quiet the mind, poppy for pain -- my eyes drifting to him against my will. I had given him some of these herbs to numb the pain, which put him in a deep sleep. 

Perhaps it had been true mercy, or perhaps it was my own selfishness, because the way he winces when he moves turns my stomach. When he sleeps, his shoulder rising and falling with his breaths and the rocking of the ship through the waves, he seems at peace. 

I had placed him in the cleanest cell and given him one of my thick blankets from my quarters to lie on against my better judgment. Despite the crew’s general insistence on taking no prisoners, along with the deep cleaning I insisted upon when I arrived to remove the filth and residue, the cells are places I would not wish for my worst enemy to reside in. So far, no one has made any complaints about the conditions I had allotted for Benji; I hope it stays that way. 

Rising from my perch, I approach the cell, my fingers curling around the rusted iron of the bars as I gaze down at him. I swallow, knowing I am being sinful. The urge I have to touch him, to embrace him, to have him for myself… I have seen enough men to think that perhaps it is not Satan testing me, nor him punishing me for the sins I did not commit. 

Blasphemy is one of the cardinal sins, after all. And I was never such a pious man, in the end. I am only pious so much as it will benefit me. Sometimes I think that my captors had liberated me when they burned down the monastery, or else I would still be there, wishing I would not dishonor my family by taking a man as my lover instead of a wife.

Benji stirs and I feel the goose prickles on my skin as I remove myself from his vicinity lest he catch me observing him in his sleep. I do not know what they intend to do with him once we arrive in Tortuga. But I know I do not want either of us to be about when it happens. 

_“What would you say if I told you… that when they called me a sodomite they weren’t just saying it? It’s… actually true,”_ he had said to me, wearing the word almost like a badge of honor. 

To call oneself… _that_ , without shame… I had not known how to respond. I still do not. I had read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah many times. Of all the passages in the Bible, this was the one I had analyzed the most, turning its contents over in my mind countless times as I sought to make sense of it. Perhaps I will find an answer soon. But not aboard this vessel.

When Benji stirs again, I am safely back on the ledge, and I thank God while simultaneously asking for forgiveness from him. Benji’s eyes flutter open and he turns his head toward the window, staring out into the vast blue sky the way I do when I want to halt the thoughts that march through my mind.

“How do you feel?” I ask, looking up from the open book I pretend to read as I attempt to turn the page. The next two pages are stuck together.

“Drowsy,” he says after a moment. “And pretty hungry.”

“I mean your pain,” I say as I try to pry the pages apart as gently as I can to avoid tearing them.

His gaze moves from the window to the two on my own face before he speaks. “I’d have been better if you hadn’t reminded me.”

“Sorry,” I say. Finally, the pages separate cleanly. 

Where I expect to see more illustrations of plants with descriptions of their uses, I see instead circles filled with geometric shapes and writing in a strange language I do not recognize. The letters curl around each other like cursive Arabic numerals mixed with shapes that make me think it could be Greek, but not any Greek I know. I place the sheet of paper I use as a book mark between these pages for later and set it aside.

“Let me get you some food,” I say to Benji, who lay with his head propped up on his bound hand awkwardly as he seems to stare through me. “I have the key to your cell, so no one should bother you but try to stay still, please. Do not draw attention to yourself.”

“I’ll be here,” Benji says.

As I leave, bracing myself against the movement of the ship, I feel eyes on me, but I do not turn to see whose they are. Technically, I did not have permission to bring Benji food, but he looks so pitiful that I have no choice but to do so. I pass the rows of cannons on each side of the arched wooden corridor below the deck as I make my way to the kitchen. 

On a ship the size of the _Kraken’s Spear_ , with twenty-odd men, the kitchen is small, with only one cook to craft the meals for all aboard. While I do not trust anyone aboard this vessel, the cook, Lucas, is the person who is overall the most trustworthy. A simple man approaching thirty, wiry hair already worn and grey, he is one of the few aboard who has shown me genuine kindness and asks nothing in return. It is rare to find someone who does not show contempt for the Taino and those of us who do not descend from colonizers.

“Ahoy,” I say. 

After all this time, the word still makes me sound like an infant learning to create coherent sounds.

“Ahoy,” says Lucas, elbow-deep in a pile of dough as he kneads it to bake fresh loaves of bread for the crew. “How’s the prisoner?”

My face tenses. “Well…”

“Lemme guess… Frightenin’ thing, innit.”

I quirk an eyebrow at him. “What do you find frightening about him?”

“The entire British Navy’ll be after us in no time, is what’s frightenin’. I ‘aven’t seen the fellow ‘imself, though, but from what I ‘ear of ‘im… I wouldn’t wanna go near ‘im. Either ‘e puts a knife in ye or ‘e seduces ye, there’s no in between,” Lucas replies, opening the oven behind him and shoving the ball of dough into it before shutting the door.

Closing my eyes so I can roll them without Lucas seeing, I sigh. I have no true evidence to support that claim. The only knowledge I have is Benji’s word. And given what he had told me, and knowing the crimes of his father and the Crown, I do not know if I can trust such a hypothesis. One of Lucas’s faults is that sometimes he will not pause to consider whether gossip is true or simply that -- gossip.

“For now, he is asleep,” I lie, glancing up past the ceiling for a moment before my eyes find the basket full of bread. “May I take some of this? And some butter and cheese, as well? For some reason I… feel famished lately.”

“Go ahead, lad,” Lucas says, still busying himself with the ovens, his back turned. I could have easily stolen the food, but I am not a thief. A liar, yes. A… _sodomite_ … perhaps. 

I take a few pieces of bread, along with some butter and cheese and wrap everything in a kerchief before shoving it inside the sleeve of my habit where it will be invisible. While I should not have any interference on my way back to the cells, I could never be too careful.

As I return to Benji’s cell, I see the trio from earlier watching him. That is, until they see me approaching. They find other matters to attend to as I sit down on the ledge. I see Benji sitting upright now, legs crossed close to his body. His soft brown hair looks disheveled from where he had lay on it. He flicks his head a few times as he attempts to remove his fringe from his forehead to no avail; I cannot help but pity him.

Once I see that we are alone once more, I crouch down beside him, pulling out the kerchief of food from my sleeve.

“Look, I brought you some food,” I say. “Do you think you can manage to eat on your own?”

“Sure, just… pass it to me, and I can figure it out. I’d feel foolish if you had to feed me like an infant,” he says with a small chuckle as I slide the kerchief and food through the bars.

He struggles a bit but as his pointed canines tear into his food like a starved, feral animal, I wonder when his last meal had truly been. The sun sets; he had been aboard the ship for over twelve hours at this point. I bring him some water to wash it down; he drinks three cups and asks for a fourth before I tell him to slow down for fear he might vomit. With the rolling of the waves, especially to the unaccustomed stomach, the probability increases exponentially.

“I have a proposition to make,” I say when he finishes his meal. 

“What is it?”

Glancing over my shoulder once more, I take a deep breath.

“We will be arriving in Tortuga soon. It will be the only chance for us to get off this ship for a while. Will you come with me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed things so far. I'll be posting two chapters at a time, one from each of their points of view. See you in the next installment, and remember, 1 comment = 1 Venji getting the fuck off the ship and having a good time.


	3. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 5 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Caribbean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benji and Victor make a plan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “What are you doing with that thing?” I ask, my eyes glued to the hammer.
> 
> “We do not have time to search for the key, but I need to get you out of those shackles quickly. Do you trust me, Benji?” he asks.
> 
> “Uh… I--”
> 
> “ _Do you trust me_?” he says again.

“Tortuga, eh,” I say, peering into Victor’s eyes through the bars of the cell. The infamous island devoted to drinking, hooliganism, and bedding whores -- and I only partake in one of those things, make that two if the whores have the right parts. “So what’s the plan?”

“We need money, first of all,” he says, his voice lowering almost to a whisper. “But I do not have any.”

“Aren’t your lot… pirates? Isn’t that what comes with the business?” I say. What kind of pirates don’t have money? Shitty ones, I imagine.

“The money belongs to us all collectively. I cannot simply take it,” Victor says. “I am not a thief.”

“Well, then, just take your share. Leave the rest.”

He opens his mouth as if to retort before closing it and giving me a look, lip curling up slightly as he presses his brows together; he chuckles.

“I suppose I should do some maths, then,” he says.

“Given what they’ve done to you, destroying your home and everything you hold dear, what’s a couple of galleons?” I say, unable to stop myself from returning a smile. 

“Perhaps.”

“Do you know where they keep their spoils?” 

“In the captain’s quarters,” he says with a heavy sigh. “This task will be… difficult.”

If I hadn’t been chained up, perhaps I could help; after all, I do specialize in evasion, as it’s a skill that always showed its use during the early mornings when I would return to my family’s estate in Port Royal after spending the night in another man’s bed. 

“If we know how long we’ll be docked in Tortuga, perhaps we could go once everyone’s disembarked.”

“But the door will be _locked,”_ he says.

“So? Pick it.”

“Do _you_ know how to pick locks?” he asks me, raising an eyebrow as his tone changes to one of… disappointment? Incredulity? I can’t tell. I hope the latter.

“Why would a noble know how to pick locks?” 

“Let’s just say that my family would be even more ashamed of me if they knew I didn’t sleep in my own bed half the time. Or perhaps they just don’t let on that they _do_ know,” I say, feeling my face heat up a bit, although I know I have nothing to be ashamed of. “Anyway…”

He clears his throat, face red as well. Sometimes I forget he’s a man of god until times like these.

“Right. So. Once we get the money we will need a change of clothes. I know I will draw attention to myself like this, and you, I must say I am surprised they have not stripped those fine threads from you.”

“I think they were planning to until you showed up,” I muse, but I breathe a sigh of relief at that. 

My mind begins to wander to what I could have endured at the hands of those men. I shudder, shoving the thoughts away. Victor’s gaze seems to soften.

“True…” he mutters, turning his eyes away. “It may also be a good idea to change your face somehow; do you think people will recognize you?”

“The good thing about me is that most people outside of Port Royal and even many who do live there have heard of me by name but have never seen my face. I suppose that’s the good thing about being a letdown; they don’t bring me around to enough places for people to know me.”

“Then an alias is in order.”

As much as I hate my surname, I couldn’t imagine answering to anything other than Benji. But if it means the difference between a dull dead man and a clever living one, my options become clearer. 

“What about… Richard Molly?” I say, trying but failing to suppress a laugh. 

Victor blinks. “That sounds… fine? Why do you find this so funny?”

I need to pause to collect myself, wiping the corners of my eyes as I try to stop laughing. “See, the thing is--”

From around the corner comes one of the men from earlier, the who isn’t egg-head. Victor bolts upright, standing at attention.

“Are ye ‘avin a laugh with the prisoner, boy?” the man barks, almost engulfing Victor’s face in his alcoholic breath; I can see him tense as the lumbering brute towers over him.

“N-no, not at all, m-matey,” Victor replies, backing up against the bars of the cell. “He is just… just a bit mad, you see.”

The man stares him down. I shuffle into the corner as quietly as I can muster. 

Hmm… Mad, he says? Perhaps I am mad to trust in him. But I lack more suitable options.

“Mollies tend to be, aye. But we’ll be dockin’ in Tortuga now. And captain’s orders say I’m meant to be watchin’ ye lot,” the man said, glaring down at Victor and Benji through his bushy black beard.

“Why do I need watching? Am I a child?” Victor asks, his voice beginning to rise.

I can’t see his face, but I know that if I had been in his place, I would have to quell the urge to kill that reached my eyes. Trying not to be conspicuous, I raise my gaze to the man’s face. He’s lying. A frustrating quality of strong, stupid people is that they can get away with whatever they want. What’s worse: I can’t even tell Victor without drawing attention to myself.

“I said it’s the captain’s orders! Are you thick?” the man says, taking one step closer with a hand outstretched. 

He was going to kill him. Right in front of me.

_Thwack._

_Thud._

The tops of his shoulders heaving as he stood over the body of the man who had tried to grab at his throat, Victor holds the thick brick of a book marked by a cross in his two hands like a trophy next to his head. In one fell swoop he had knocked the man unconscious; he lay there like a defeated pile of cloth too destroyed and of poor quality to even be used for sewing sails. I breathe a sigh of relief, my body instantly relaxing, the tension evaporating into the salty air.

“What have I done?” he says after a moment, hand falling limp as he drops the book on top of the unconscious man’s face.

“Victor, that was brilliant!” I say, scuttling forward against the bars of the cell. 

By now, the ship had skidded to a halt; outside, the sky is inky, but the lamps inside the ship provide a sufficient amount of lighting for us within. Victor turns to me, his lip quivering, blinking as if to coax the tears at the corners of his eyes back into his tear ducts. 

“This was not _brilliant_ , if someone sees that I have felled him, they will be suspicious,” Victor hisses.

On the deck above us, a stampede of feet faded toward the island and away from the ship. We listen for a moment longer; no footsteps, no breathing, no sounds of life. It was only Victor, I, and the man laid unconscious on the wooden boards beneath our feet. No one came looking for him.

“Would you like to say that again?” I ask, pleased with my own foresight. 

Victor says nothing as he leans over to pick up his book and slip it back into his habit. How he can simply carry it about I have no idea. He withdraws a key from his belt and unlocks the cell I sit within, and the door swings open. I scramble to my feet, forgetting for a moment what it was like to stand; I grab at the bars for support with my bound hands, almost smashing my face against the metal.

“Stay here. I will return in a moment,” Victor says, not waiting for me to respond before he disappears around the corner. 

I right myself, leaning on shaky limbs. He returns in a moment, just as he said he would, lugging in a sledgehammer.

“What are you doing with that thing?” I ask, my eyes glued to the hammer.

“We do not have time to search for the key, but I need to get you out of those shackles quickly. Do you trust me, Benji?” he asks.

“Uh… I--”

“ _Do you trust me_?” he asks again.

My heart hammers against my chest as if it were playing a jape on me. Hands shaking, I rest the chains of my shackles on the floor of the ship, closing my eyes as I turn my head away. 

“Yes,” I say, as if I have any other choice.

He brings the hammer down hard with as much power as he can muster. 

_Bang._

_Clang._

I open my eyes as I feel the metal fall away from my wrists. For a moment I can simply stare at them, flipping them around from top to bottom a few times as I examine the cuts and bruises that litter them like a tapestry of blood and tissue. 

“You can admire yourself later,” Victor says, grabbing me by the hand as he steps over the man on the floor. 

We race up the stairs to the empty deck, the only thing visible being the torches scattered across the pier and the lights of the taverns and whorehouses that beckon us and all other sailors ashore. My eyes need time to adjust but Victor plows forward toward the bow of the ship to the captain’s quarters. 

“Pick the lock,” he commands, glancing over me and standing on his toes to ensure he gets a good view. So far, all clear.

“Say ‘please’. I only take orders in the bedroom,” I tease.

“Now is not the time,” Victor says with a sigh. 

“Well, do you have anything to pick it _with?_ A sharp object, perhaps?”

“I… will be right back,” he says, leaving me alone on the deck. I gaze out into the Caribbean, its normally rich blue water now black as sparkling soot. 

The pitter patter of feet alerts me to Victor’s return, and surely enough, he charges toward the door, sledgehammer in hand, and I leap out of his way.

_Bang._

_Snap._

_Crack._

He pulls the hammer out of the door, its material splintered and crumbling onto the deck like newly fallen snow. The door knob, now shattered, falls off, allowing him to shove the door open to reveal the captain’s modest quarters.

Inside was only a small bed, a desk, and a dresser directly below the single window that looks out into the sea. The light from outside illuminates the room just so that the furniture could be seen, but feeling about in the dark would prove to be a task.

I shuffle inside, feeling the desk and opening one of the drawers, patting the contents. Nothing that resembles any coin. I frown, choosing another.

“Found it,” he says, and I hear the faint jingle of metal on metal indicating that his guess is correct.

“How many?” I ask.

“... 3 galleons.”

“That’s enough for… what, a pint and a whore?”

“ _No_ whores,” he says a bit forcefully, pocketing the money and leaving. “We only have a few hours to find another crew before they come back and see that the ship has been ransacked.”

“You can have the pint. I don’t drink,” I say with a shrug as I follow. “There are plenty of places to hide. I think you’re overestimating their intelligence, Victor.”

“Perhaps you are right,” he says dryly as we step off the ship and finally onto the equally dry earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Onto Victor's POV now... And as usual 1 comment = 1 Venji living happily ever after.


	4. Victor Salazar - 5 May, 1787; Tortuga, Haiti, Kingdom of France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benji drags Victor to a brothel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You want something to drink?” Benji asks, holding out the coin purse with a wink. “My treat.”
> 
> I snatch it back from him. “How did you get this from me?” I ask.
> 
> “It fell out of your habit,” he says innocently, drawing circles on the finished cherry wood countertop with his finger as he rests his cheek on his other hand. “You should really keep better track of your things.”

“Look, that brothel looks nice,” Benji says, pointing to one farther down closer to the beach. I pause my steps, the words striking me like rounds from a musket, one through each limb and then through the skull. 

“You and I are meant to be escaping to join another crew and _that_ is what you are most concerned with? Once we find our crew you will have plenty of time for… whores.”

“What, would you rather be the one to help me out here?” he teases, but I feel the flush rising in my cheeks as I look away. I am lucky that the Lord showed himself to be somewhat useful by blessing me with a dark night.

“N-no, I--”

As he eyes me, I am unsure of whether he takes notice of my reaction in the dark or not, but he swiftly clears his throat before he cuts me off.

“Hey, I’m just… having a little bit of fun, that’s all,” he says, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Relax. Maybe you could get yourself a nice lass while we’re there, too.”

I say nothing, the weight of his hand like a brand on me. When I glance at him from the corner of my eye, I see his gaze on me for a moment before he looks away again. 

There are not many shops about in Tortuga, so my plan to find a change of clothes at least for myself may prove impossible. Only taverns and whorehouses abound as far as the eye can see. It appears the ordeal we had gone through to procure these three measly coins had been for naught. 

“Hold this,” I say, grabbing Benji by the arm and stopping him mid-stride as I hand him the books I carry with me in my habit: The Bible, of course, as well as _Materia Medica_. 

When I guide us behind a tree, I remove my habit, leaving only my underclothes, before throwing it up into the tree to hang upon the branches as the wind sways. I watch it for a moment, feeling the salt move through my body, turning my face to Benji, who does not bother to look away from me as he gapes. 

“Ballsy of you to walk around in public in your smallclothes,” Benji remarks, eyeing me up and down. 

“A man in his smallclothes belongs here more than a priest,” I say as we walk.

As expected, Benji leads us into the nearest brothel, a surprisingly up-scale one compared to the shabby ones around it, its yellow stucco facade still intact, the colonnade framing the entrance pearly white and showing no indication of wear. At least I had removed my habit before entering, although from the way it appeared, one would not easily think it a house of sin but perhaps instead the estate of a wealthy family. I become more acutely aware of my state of undress for a moment, before realizing that Benji and I are some of the most modestly dressed people in the establishment, especially in comparison to the women frolicking about in the nude. I look away, feeling the sensation some experience during their first voyages on the sea, when the wooden vessel rocks in any direction it chooses and rattles one’s insides as if they were full of ivory dice. 

Instead, I gaze at Benji, his presence warm and familiar. He walks with a swagger and all I can do is follow behind. At the counter in the back of the brothel stands a bored looking woman with bright green eyeshadow and a powdered white wig serving drinks. I stand back as Benji approaches her, engaging in an inaudible conversation as he jingles the coins that he had somehow managed to slip from me without my noticing. What a wicked little Englishman…

The white-haired woman snaps her fingers.

“You want something to drink?” Benji asks, holding out the coin purse with a wink. “My treat.”

I snatch it back from him. “How did you get this from me?” I ask.

“It fell out of your habit,” he says innocently, drawing circles on the finished cherry wood countertop with his finger as he rests his cheek on his other hand. “You should really keep better track of your things.”

Sighing, I order myself a glass of port; if I am meant to wait about as Benji beds whores, I may as well enjoy myself. I find a seat on one of the red leather sofas and Benji follows, sitting beside me. As I sip my wine, the syrupy, heavy liquid coating my throat, Benji watches me. 

“Leave some coin for my fun. Don’t drink it all away,” Benji says. 

A moment later, his gaze moves toward the two fellows walking down the corridor toward us -- one tall, strong, dark, with black wavy hair and the other a bit shorter but still taller than Benji, and thinner with prettier features than the first man. They both wear fine clothes of silk and satin. 

Of the three of them, Benji is still the most radiant, a pearl I wish to keep for myself. This thought about Benji seems easier to hold than the last. Perhaps the port has begun to have its effect on me.

Sliding across the sofa and leaving more space than necessary, I make room for the taller man to sit as I sip my drink. He wraps an arm around Benji as the other prettier one sits on Benji’s lap. None of them pay me any mind for quite a while, so I do not feel strange observing them. But with each passing moment, with each touch Benji endures from the hands of these two strangers, the more he responds to their kisses, the more I drink. When I finish, I hold the glass in my hand; it is the only thing grounding me.

The tall one rests his fingers around Benji’s throat and kisses along the column of his pale neck as Benji lets his head loll back. He turns his face toward me, lips parting as the man sucks on his skin. The one sat on Benji’s lap had already opened his shirt, revealing his pale chest; he trails kisses across it in a way that makes it look like this is not truly work. 

I can see Benji’s canines glinting as he grins. His eyes fall closed. It was foolish of me to expect to see this and feel nothing as the three of them sit beside me, committing their sin. But as I watch them, my gaze steady, does that not make me a sinner, too?

This thought makes me squeeze the glass in my hand so hard, it shatters.

I do not even feel the shards pierce my flesh. Or the fountain that drains from my wounds. Or the eyes on me from the people around me glaring as if I had caused a scene. Perhaps I have.

Benji pulls away from the man, eyes stuck to my hand like a fly to a glue trap. 

“Victor? Are you all right?” he asks me. “You’re… bleeding. A lot.”

When I look down and see the red stains all over my smallclothes and traveling downward, all over the couch I was sitting upon, I simply smear my hand on myself.

“I am fine,” I say.

He looks between the men and me for a moment before sighing. Taking the coin purse from the couch where it had slid off me, he opens it and gives each of the men a galleon before sending them on their way. 

“You’re clearly not fine,” he says. But he does not ask any more questions or say anything else on the subject.

Instead, he rips off a large strip off the leg of my smallclothes and wraps it tightly around my hand. 

“God, you look like an absolute disaster,” he says before he buries his face in his hand, rubbing a bit of my blood on his forehead.

“Thank you,” I say, and nothing more.

What a shame I had left my herbs on the ship. They would be useful now, so I could pretend the way he looks at me now, as if to study me, disappointment and… something else written on his face like a damaged piece of parchment. Then, I could ignore the way his eyes linger on my lips for too long -- so long that even I cannot help but notice.

He moves closer. Then hesitates. Then ceases.

I blink back the tears that just began to fall. Now I can feel hundreds of needles in my palm and in my fingers, the sharp ache making me wince. This is why I do not drink. It will be even worse later.

Rising, he leaves me for a moment, coin purse in hand. He converses with the white-haired woman again, and he again jingles the coins. This time instead of snapping her fingers, she goes away. When she reappears, she comes bearing two piles of dark rags, and Benji gives her the rest of the coins before returning. 

“Thank you,” I say again, as he passes me one of the pile of rags, which turns out to be a shirt and a pair of trousers. They are plain enough to fulfill their function.

Benji offers to help me dress myself, but over the din, I refuse. I will not have him make an infant of me. After a struggle, I manage to cover my blood-soaked smallclothes with the clothes, and now the blood has disappeared. Once it dries, it will be unnoticeable. 

With another sigh, he offers me a hand, and I rise from the sofa. He eyes me up and down the way men do to women on the street when they know they have an audience and no one will shout at them to stop. I do the same to him; he looks away. Perhaps he is playing coy with me.

We leave the brothel in silence, but that silence easily turns to a mixture of drunken screaming and the sounds of skin on skin from the fighting and fornicating that is going on around us as we weave through the crowds. Then we wander to the beach, shoulder to shoulder. 

“Would you like to talk about what happened?” Benji asks me. His voice is soft and imploring. For some reason, I had expected him to be more enraged that he had not had the chance to bed those men. I suppose I would have been fairly displeased if I were in his place.

“No,” I say simply. Not with you.

He looks down at his own hands or perhaps at the sand beneath our feet, crunching beneath our boots. Fiddling with his fingers, he also says nothing.

Regardless, we continue walking along the beach until we reach the edge where the wooden planks of the pier begin again. Down this path the crowds thin and the air falls quiet. I see two figures sitting at a table, two torches illuminating them from behind, their wide brimmed hats giving them the appearance of two mushrooms sprouting from the wood after the rain.

As we walk farther along the path, the sign posted in front of the table becomes clearer. 

“ _Seeking a crew for the Rainbow Horizon._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the two chapter update for now, this one from Vic's POV. This was definitely a trip to write but I hope you enjoy it. As usual, 1 comment = 1 Venji having a good time!


	5. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 5 May, 1787; Tortuga, Haiti, Kingdom of France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor and Benji find a new crew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Oh, no. No… He and I… we aren’t together like _that_. We don’t actually know each other,” I say, waving my hands in front of me. My face, which had been hot from the rage that had subsided, heats up again.
> 
> Lake wraps an arm around Mia’s shoulder and places a kiss to her cheek. Mia rolls her eyes. I can’t tell if it’s in response to Lake or me. 
> 
> “Sure,” Mia says with a tight-lipped smile.

I allow Victor to go forward as I fall back, and I observe him wordlessly. He’s acting strange. But I wish I knew him better to understand his behaviors. Is this just how he is when he’s intoxicated? My gut tells me no; it’s about more than the wine. The way he looked at me… And how he looks at me when he thinks I am observing something else… Perhaps I’m simply a curiosity to him, an object to study, not a man. 

But the other part of me thinks back to the ship, peeling away the membrane of memory and burrowing deep inside. How he could have left me to whatever unspeakable crimes those men would commit against me. How he could have said nothing and let them beat me and starve me. And how I would still be on that ship, cowering in the corner in my shackles, skin torn and oozing infection as I wasted away. Is he simply a good man? Or do I fascinate him as much as he does me? Perhaps both. I cannot say.

“Greetings. You seek a crew,” I hear Victor say to one of the women sitting behind the table, the small black-haired and brown-skinned one who seems to glow like coals with the light shining behind her. “What are you called?”

The other woman, the blonde one with a round face and pale skin, sits still, her eyes closed as she snores quietly beside her, body gently swaying with the movement of her breathing. 

“Aye. Captain Mia Brooks,” says the black-haired woman. “You two do not look like sailors.”

“A woman captain… Intriguing. Victor Salazar at your service, miss-- er, _Captain_ ,” he says as he leans on the table. “I was a sailor, for a time, but not by choice. This one is green--” he says, as he points to me, “from Port Royal. We are in a bit of a hurry, though. When do you leave?”

With a chuckle, Mia eyes us both up and down. I have no choice but to approach her. 

“Everyone here is always in a hurry… Running from the law... “ she says.

“It’s not the law that seeks us but another crew and we would be happy to be out at sea by the time they realize we’ve gone,” I say. I hold out my hand to her. “Richard Molly.”

She snorts, taking my hand. She then nudges her partner awake. “Lake. _Hey._ Wake up. We have fresh meat.”

The woman beside her jolts awake, almost falling out of her chair and onto the planks of the path. She blinks several times as Mia clamps her on the shoulder. Her hat tips to the side, threatening to slide off her head before she rights it. 

“Hello, lads,” the one called Lake says. “Captain Lake Meriwether at your service.”

As strange as it is to see two women heading a ship, there are no other people looking to build a crew; our options are slim. I glance to the side to see Victor stroking his chin. 

“Get a load of this one,” Mia says, pointing to me as she laughs, “He calls himself ‘Richard Molly’.”

Lake laughs, too, and I cannot tell if they’re making a mockery of me. I’ve grown used to these sorts of reactions, but it still fills me with rage; I feel my face heating up. Victor looks to me, and my gaze connects with his in the middle. I swallow, biting my lip to keep from saying all the curses I’ve been shoving down aloud. He sets his hand on my shoulder.

“That’s obviously not your real name,” Lake says as she wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. “No one calls _himself_ ‘molly’. You don’t look like an Irishman. Try again.” 

Mia writes something down on the piece of parchment before her as her laughter wanes like the light when the sun sets. “I’m sure he has a good reason for using an alias, Lake. Let him be.” She then turns back to Victor and I. “Anyway, I’ve written down both your names. We’ve docked around that way,” she says, pointing down the path to where it curves along the edge of the beach. “No one should be able to find you down there. We leave at first light.”

“For the record,” Lake says as we leave, “we weren’t mocking you two for your proclivities. We’re the same. Mia is my wife, so it wouldn’t make sense for me to do so. It’s just… I’ve never heard someone refer to themselves as such without batting an eye and in such a crass way, even by our standards.”

My eyebrow quirks. Victor’s face is in his hand. 

“Oh, no. No… He and I… we aren’t together like _that_. We don’t actually know each other,” I say, waving my hands in front of me. My face, which had been hot from the rage that had subsided, heats up again.

Lake wraps an arm around Mia’s shoulder and places a kiss to her cheek. Mia rolls her eyes. I can’t tell if it’s in response to Lake or me. 

“Sure,” Mia says with a tight-lipped smile.

“Go off and make yourselves comfortable, then,” Lake says, shooing us away. She adds: “The beds are too small to share so you two can’t share a room, unfortunately.”

I groan, taking Victor by the elbow and pulling him back down the path, the two mushrooms behind us fading into the distance and disappearing into the darkness. 

“That was… interesting,” I say, breaking the silence that had stacked up between us like a brick wall. 

Victor doesn’t respond; I’m beginning to think I’ve done something to irritate him somehow. He refuses to look at me, keeping his eyes on the ground as he shrugs me off of his arm. I sigh, staring at the ground, watching as the boards of wood making up the path became less and less worn down. The trees begin to thicken, sprawling out before us in the night and blocking the light from the opposite end of the island. If one were to arrive at Tortuga from that end, expecting a deserted island, one would have an unwelcome surprise of noise and booze on the other end. 

The ship, as expected, sits alone and lit from within, anchored to a tiny pier in an area where the water must be deep despite being close to the shore, almost like a Viking funeral before it is sent out to sea, just as the arrow lights the wood of the boat. Perhaps we are going to our graves.

We cross the bridge in silence, taking the stairs down to the lower deck. I wonder if anyone else is aboard, and as if on cue, a head pops out from within one of the tiny rooms, followed by a much smaller head attached to the body of a capuchin monkey.

“New recruits? Brilliant!” says the man, wearing a black bandana with pieces of wild, wavy brown hair poking out that seems to billow as he speaks. “The name’s Felix Westen. I’m the chef aboard this fine ship. Please let me know if you have any dietary restrictions or anything of the sort that I should know about. Also, this here is Jack, my pet monkey. He’s very fun.”

He holds his hand out to shake each of our hands. We introduce ourselves, I under my alias again, earning a soft chuckle from Felix. He also turns with Jack the monkey on his shoulder, urging us to shake his hand, too, because “Jack hates when people are impolite”. I blink a few times before complying and muttering a soft “How do you do, Jack?” When Victor does the same, I cannot help but grin.

“So. What brings you two to our crew?” Felix asks us, leaning against the doorway. Jack climbs atop his head and fiddles with his bandana.

I open my mouth to speak, but Victor rests a hand on my arm before he cuts me off.

“We encountered some… troubles with our previous crew,” Victor says, glancing at me from the side of his eye. “So we hoped to find safe passage aboard this ship.”

Felix nods, eyebrows rising on his forehead as he takes notice of Victor’s hand on my arm, gaze resting there. Jack screeches before hopping down and grabbing onto his sleeve as if he were on a tree.

“Ahh… I see. So you two are also…?” 

“ _No!”_ we say simultaneously, probably a bit too quickly, as well.

“Oh, wow, my _sincerest_ apologies,” Felix says with a grimace, holding his hands out before him defensively. “I suppose I figured because the captains are, Andrew and I are, and we wanted to get more--”

“Well, I mean, _I_ am, but he-- Victor, he isn’t,” I say. Whether I believe the words is another matter.

Beside me, Victor shakes his head vigorously with a close-mouthed smile. “No, I am not… like _that._ I have taken a vow of celibacy.”

“Ahh, I see! Very admirable,” Felix says, clapping Victor on the shoulder. “I respect you so much.”

“Thank you?” he says as he raises an eyebrow. “Well, anyway, it was good meeting you, Felix. But I believe Benji and I should find our quarters so we can sleep, as we have had quite an excruciating day. Could you direct us to where we should go?”

“Of course, sorry, right this way. Look at me, getting carried away as usual,” Felix says quickly, motioning to the doors across from him. “These two rooms are unoccupied. This one here,” he juts his thumb into the room behind him, “this is mine. Beside mine is my husband, Andrew’s. He’s also the navigator, by the way. And all the way at the other end are the captains’ quarters. But otherwise, feel free to move around as you see fit. This is your home now, so make yourself comfortable. Anyway, it was good meeting you. Goodnight.”

He waves before retreating into his room and shutting the door, and Jack gives us an enthusiastic two-handed wave before they leave Victor and I in the candlelit corridor alone again. Victor sighs, face crumpled, unable to look at me as he mutters a soft “goodnight” more to his own feet than to me, simply out of courtesy, and enters the room beside the one we stand in front of, shutting the door and locking it. I gaze after him, wanting to know but a modicum of what lay on his mind. 

What did I do to him to deserve his aversion? Is he simply disgusted by me? Or perhaps this man who appears to never sleep has finally found himself exhausted? 

I swallow. There’s no use for me to dig through the soil of emotions that don’t concern me. Over a man who I’ve known for only a day, who helped liberate me, and who I, unfortunately, now owe my life to. The debt weighs on my back, leaden and cold like the silence from his lips. Enough of that, I say.

For now, I recuse myself for the night, too. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Onto Victor's POV now... And as usual 1 comment = 1 Venji living happily ever after.


	6. Victor Salazar - 6 May, 1787; Tortuga, Haiti, Kingdom of France

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor and Benji get to know each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, give me clarity. Show me the way. Guide my hand, for I cannot do it myself. Even if it leads me to Hell. I simply want an answer.
> 
> The knock at my door grabs me from my prayer. I look up at the ceiling then wait a moment. Is that you, God?
> 
> “Who is it?” I finally ask.
> 
> “... Benji,” comes the immediate muttered reply, as if his mouth is directly in front of the door.

Finally, I can be alone with my thoughts. I cannot bear it any longer to be near Benji. In the short time we have known each other, I realize now what a mistake it had been to intervene. He is nothing but a sinful distraction, something to draw me onto the thorny path of temptation and directly to Hell. 

But I also could not stand by and do nothing. Would it not be a greater sin to simply watch an atrocity occur before one’s eyes? How could I consider myself a man of God, a God whose judgement at times proves itself to be questionable? Now I must live with the consequence of my action. And one may ask what the consequence of doing a good deed is -- no, not a fear for my own life, my blood running like glassy shards of ice through my veins at the thought that I will be pursued by my own captors until their debt is paid, for not only myself but Benji, as well, who they will see as stolen property -- but the consequence, and therefore my punishment for not straying from the path of righteousness, is affection.

The affection I feel for Benji continues to turn my stomach. I know I should not speculate on such things, but perhaps in another life, if such a thing exists, he and I were man and wife. Not in this life, though. In this life we are both cursed in our bodies as they are. Even if he has the proclivities he has, even if… perhaps, then we are the same in that. My only solace in becoming a priest was knowing I could not act upon those desires. Although I suppose the vows of celibacy I took mean nothing now.

I have no home to return to, no family to bind me or to bring shame upon, no fortune to speak of. In the end, I am no one. I am hundreds of kilometers away from San Juan, the sea cutting a chasm between the islands, and I do not know when I will return, if at all. What use are my vows now? In a matter of hours, I have become a criminal. I may as well embrace it.

Sighing, I hold my head in my hands. A moment ago, I was exhausted, the alcohol I had consumed draping a cloud over me that attempted to put me to sleep. At least, that was before I had the misfortune of observing those men doing to Benji what I could do myself. 

I could, in another life. But not in this one. I may desire it but I also do not want it. If I am to live as a normal man again, I cannot simply abandon God’s rules and his word. With that thought, I withdraw my rosary from my pocket and begin to recite the words I had memorized after repeating them hundreds if not thousands of times.

“ _Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…”_

Please, give me clarity. Show me the way. Guide my hand, for I cannot do it myself. Even if it leads me to Hell. I simply want an answer.

The knock at my door grabs me from my prayer. I look up at the ceiling then wait a moment. Is that you, God?

“Who is it?” I finally ask.

“... Benji,” comes the immediate muttered reply, as if his mouth is directly in front of the door.

My initial urge is to let him wait out in the corridor alone, but that would be cruel. And I am not a cruel man. Impatient, selfish, sinful, yes. But not cruel -- at least, not to those who have done nothing to me.

I rise from my seat, shuffling to the door and unlocking it. When I open it, I see Benji standing there in his nightshirt, his hazel eyes sparkling in the candlelight. His eyebrows look as if they are fused together with how forcefully he has them pressed together.

“What is wrong?” I ask him.

“Can’t sleep,” he says, looking into my eyes. “Also, you seemed upset and I wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“ _Oh._ That is… kind of you,” I say, feeling warm. “I suppose I was… worried about being chased by the _Kraken’s Spear_ to the ends of the earth but the likelihood of them knowing where we have gone is… low. For now we are safe.” Not a lie.

He seems to relax a bit before he asks: “Can I come in?”

“Yes, of course,” I say, stepping aside to let him into my tiny room. I motion to the bed, which is short yet touches three of the light brown wooden walls. “Have a seat.”

When he sits down, he sighs. I look between the chair at my desk and the spot on my bed, contemplating which to choose. The bed is too intimate. I sit across from him on my chair, turning it to face him and I wait for him to speak. The wound in my hand pulsates.

“I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for saving me,” Benji says, eyes seeming to stare through me. “So… thank you. I don’t want to imagine what could have happened to me if you hadn’t been there.”

“Anyone who was in my place would have done the same,” I say with a shrug. 

“Hmm… not sure if that’s true,” he says, leaning over and resting his elbow on the top of his thigh as his legs hung a bit above the floor. “Most men are monsters. And I’m so used to being forward about my… proclivities, but I’m starting to realize that I need to be more careful about that sort of thing. I thought… you decided you hated me for it. And that was why you didn’t want to speak to me anymore.”

Swallowing, I remove my spectacles, setting them aside on my desk and massaging the bridge of my nose. I run my hand down my face and look back up at him.

“You have done nothing to me. And as much as I do not understand your… propensity for visiting brothels or sneaking about in the night or… calling yourself a sodomite, you have done nothing to cause me or anyone else harm. Lest I mention, as well, that I have done more harm to the oaf I felled on the Kraken than you have to anyone. So if anyone should be guilty, it should be I,” I say, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees as well.

In that moment I finally see Benji’s lips up close. They look like two pillows the color of a strawberry’s inside. Interesting…

He shifts in his seat, moving his face a bit away from me. The light tricks my pupils; surely his face is not red, as well. 

“But you did what you did for good reason,” Benji says as he sits back with his hands behind him to support him. “You’re a good man, Victor.”

Not good, only a simpleton who has learned the rules too diligently. Something about his earnestness, the way his eyes widen when he speaks, retaining a strong gaze with whoever he speaks with, assures me that he does not intend to flatter me. I wonder if there is some objective truth to his words. 

“Thank you,” I say, my lip curling up into a smile. His does the same. 

“Victor… You never told me about your life back in the monastery. And… before,” he says after a moment.

There is not much to tell, truthfully, but I attempt anyway. I tell him about my childhood in San Juan, about the hideous forts the Spanish built, ruining the landscape to protect their cargo, about the blue cobblestone streets that wound through the barrios. I speak about how I taught myself to speak English by reading and speaking with travelers and merchants who would stop in the city on their way to the rest of the colonies. And I tell him about my time in the monastery that started when I was sixteen, after I left my family for fear of shaming them. I still miss my younger sister and brother; by now my sister, Pilar, would be a woman grown, eighteen and most likely to be wed soon.

But I do not tell him about the boy who sent me there, whose kind brown eyes seemed to peer into me and read my secrets before I even knew of them myself. When Benji sets his attention on me, rapt and firm, the memory of that boy, whose name I chose to forget, returns like a maelstrom, freezing my soul and fusing it to my mortal body. I knew then what I, after three years, still refuse to accept. Three years of praying, hoping, and begging for God to change me. Perhaps the fire was him telling me that he refused.

Benji tells me about his life in Port Royal, as well, about his strained relationship with his father, about his fascination with piracy ever since he saw his first public execution at the age of eleven. This fascination grew even more intense when he learned that his father had become an admiral, as well as by the knowledge that pirate culture accepted the parts of humanity that civil society considered brutish and sinful, including his attraction to men. He would spend the time when he was not attending lessons or sneaking around at night learning to play any instruments he could find, as well as reading books and swimming in the harbor flanked on all sides by the drooping green leaves of coconut trees, watching the ships come and go, waiting for the day when he could escape the monotony and judgment of aristocratic society. 

But he had not expected that day to be one when he went to see a man he had met he had met at the library, only to find that the man had enlisted a few of the _Kraken’s Spear_ ’s crewmembers to kidnap him and hold him hostage for a bit of coin from his family. That coin would never come, though. Benji admits that it had hurt to learn that the man had not even truly liked him; he had just wanted to use him.

We converse through the night and into the morning, when the light shines through the tiny round window over my bed and the ship begins to sail away from Tortuga and out into the open sea. Although we do not know where it would take us next, we take solace in the knowledge that finally, we can breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of the 2 chapter update! Hope you're enjoying this story so far! :D As always, 1 comment = 1 Venji having a good time.


	7. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 6 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Atlantic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew find out Benji's secret.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Just tell us your surname. We won’t throw you overboard. Promise,” Lake says. She extends a pinky.
> 
> Finally, I find my voice. “Promise?”
> 
> “Yes. Just tell us.”

I’d fallen asleep in Victor’s bed.

And even worse, he hadn’t had the heart to do anything about it, so I awoke all but swaddled in a blanket with him snoring in his chair with his head resting on the hand he’d propped up on his desk. How chivalrous.

My knuckles bang against the wall as I stretch myself out, the sunlight from the window filtering in and illuminating all it touches, casting a wispy incandescence across Victor’s face, and for a moment, in my sleep-hazed eyes, he looks like an angel. 

Based on where the sun sits in the sky at this moment, it appears to be just before noon. It’s quiet, and I wonder if the others on the ship have awoken yet. For one more moment, I observe Victor’s face, unable to resist the urge to cup his cheek, before I withdraw my hand with a sigh. Perhaps I should let him rest some more.

When I open the door, I see a fellow I don’t recognize opposite me, peering up at me from his own desk. 

“Good morning. Or should I say, good afternoon,” the fellow says as he rises, setting aside what looks like a map.

He towers over me in his tricorn hat, with brown skin and relaxed brown eyes that make me wonder if he has any cares at all. Regardless, he holds out a hand. I take it.

“Good to meet you. Benji. And you are…?” I say, eyeing him up and down. Then I freeze. 

Narrowing his eyes, the man takes a step toward me. I can tell I’d been caught. In my sleep-addled state I had forgotten that I am meant to use my alias. _Shit._

“I’m Andrew Spencer. And yes, that is my _real_ name. We only got two new recruits last night, a Victor and a Richard. I know that’s Victor’s room,” he says, pointing to where I’d just exited from, “and so, I have a lot of questions for you. But maybe first we should tell the captains you lied to them.”

“They already know,” I say quickly, bristling. “Well, at least that I was using an alias.”

“Look. We don’t care who you are as long as you’re not some sorta spy. But we must be pretty desperate if they aren’t even going to do any background checks…” Andrew says, taking another step closer to me, fully in my space now to the point where I can feel his breath on my face. “Who are you really?”

I say nothing, looking away. 

“Answer the question.”

When I say nothing, he sighs, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me down the corridor as I thrash about; but it’s no use; his grip acts as a steel vice around me, unbreakable. Once I realize my attempts are futile, I go limp. But Andrew seems unfazed as he pulls me up the creaky stairs, finally releasing me once he gets to the upper deck. He shoves me aside.

“Mia! Lake!” he calls out, gaze raised to the helm of the ship, where Mia stands at the wheel. “Did you know we have a spy aboard?”

Lake descends the stairs to the deck below, eyes flicking between Andrew, Mia and me. As the wind whips my hair, I stare out into the open blue water; there are no other ships and no land; the only thing accompanying us in our journey is the sun. I realize I am still in my nightshirt as it billows around me, and it makes me want to return to the deck below and hide away from the elements.

“Why do you think he’s a spy?” Lake asks him before examining me closely. It’s the first time we see each other in the light. “We all use aliases from time to time, and it’s usually because we’re running away from someone. Leave him be.”

“You said your name was Benji,” he says, grabbing me by the arm again and pulling me away from the mast. “He won’t tell me anymore, though.”

“We won’t be mad at you, y’know. Plus we’re in the middle of the ocean now so there’s not much we can really do aside from throw him overboard,” Lake suggests, tapping her chin. Her wide-brimmed hat seems unaffected by the wind, staying on her head the entire time. 

I, however, feel the air leave my body as it cuts through me instead. The thought of being left wading in the open water made me want to off myself on the spot instead of having to endure it. Perhaps that was why I had been so hesitant to become a pirate in the first place; the reality of being shipwrecked in the middle of the sea, treading water until you simply give up and drown, had deterred me. But now I have no choice.

“ _Lake!”_ Mia calls from the helm. “We are not going to throw him overboard. Get that thought out of your head!”

Her words reassure me a bit, but I still feel my body remain tense. 

“Just tell us your surname. We won’t throw you overboard. Promise,” Lake says. She extends a pinky.

Finally, I find my voice. “Promise?”

“Yes. Just tell us.”

She’s right; there’s no more use in hiding it any longer when the information will come to light soon, anyway.

“Campbell. Benjamin Campbell. As in… Son of Admiral Campbell of the British Navy.”

Silence falls on us all and the three of them simply stare at me. After a moment, Lake approaches me and grabs my arm, attempting to drag me to the side of the ship herself.

 _“For god’s sake Lake, stop!”_ Mia shouts, letting go of the wheel and leaping down the stairs. She wrenches us apart. “Have you lost your mind? We are _never_ in the business of killing anyone or throwing anyone overboard. You know that!” she says, scolding Lake. She turns to me. “And you! If what you say is true, the entirety of the British navy will be on our tail in no time!”

“Don’t worry,” I say, stepping away from them. “You’re lucky my father doesn’t care enough about me to go after me. The guys who kidnapped me before so they could extort my father unfortunately got nothing out of it.”

Mia’s expression softens a bit, but Lake seems unconvinced. “Tell us more.”

“Can we move away from here and perhaps go inside? I don’t need you to threaten me with throwing me into the ocean again,” I say weakly, my skin going pale as I look out into the giant blue abyss. “But I promise you I don’t mean you any harm. I can’t thank you enough for taking me in.”

“Fine. Andrew, man the ship,” Mia says, before she leads me and Lake down to the lower deck again.

They sit me down atop an overturned wooden bucket and lean against the wall, one on each side of me with her arms crossed over her chest, examining me like some unknown and unrecognizable organism. 

“All right, get talking,” Lake orders, and I sigh before complying and proceeding to tell her everything.

“And that’s how we escaped the _Kraken’s Spear--_ ”

In that moment, a lock clicked, followed by the click-clack of boots on wood. Victor appears from the corridor, bespectacled gaze zigzagging between the captains and me before he spoke.

“What is going on here?” he asks.

“They know everything, Victor. I’m sorry,” I say, unable to meet his pupils with my own. “They were going to throw me overboard.”

“No, we _weren’t_ ,” Lake says with a wave of her hand. Mia nudges her. 

“You knew who he was but you didn’t tell us,” Mia says, taking a step toward Victor. “From what Benji tells _us_ , you two only just met. Any man with wits about him would have used that to his advantage.”

“Well, he is lucky I do not have my wits about me most days,” Victor says. Perhaps, but I am also lucky that Victor is an honorable man.

Despite the short time he and I spent sleeping, Victor seems more at ease. The weight of a secret clearly crushed him psychologically, even if it didn’t have to be his own. I can’t stop my lip from curling up.

“In that case, what reason do we have to trust _you_ , Victor Salazar?” Mia asks him, poking him in the chest.

He raises his hands in surrender. “You have no reason to. But perhaps I can show you something that will absolve us both. I will return in a moment.”

I raise my eyebrow as I watch him walk back down the corridor and disappear into his room for a moment, before he returns bearing the _Materia Medica_ he always carries with him, the tome seeming to weigh like a single piece of cotton in his hand. He opens it to where the page is marked with a strip of parchment, and then turns it around to show it to us.

“In the hundreds of times I have read this book, I have never come across this page until yesterday. I did not know what it could be. Whatever it is may prove valuable.”

The lettering looks familiar yet foreign at the same time. I stand and approach, squinting to get a better look. Lake shrugs, rolling her eyes. But Mia… her eyes look wide, her hand covering her mouth. I look past Victor to ensure she hasn’t seen a spectre; the corridor is empty.

Where did I see these drawings before…? I _have_ seen them… Tugging at my hair, I ruminate, closing my eyes for a moment as I sift through the pail of my memories. Somewhere on the beaches of Port Royal… Off the path, away from where people are meant to go… I can smell sand and gunpowder and damp… But I can’t see anything useful. Grimacing, I open my eyes again.

I watch as Mia steps back, her brown skin suddenly looking grey. Lake wraps an arm around her and guides her to sit down. “Are you all right?” she asks her wife.

All Mia can do is shake her head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed the chaos lol. Onto Vic's POV now and remember, 1 comment = 1 get your shit together Venji.


	8. Victor Salazar - 6 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Atlantic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew decide on a plan of action.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Well, I have… held a knife before, if that counts for anything,” I say.
> 
> “I’m… competent,” Benji says, jumping into a stance and waving an air sword about. 
> 
> With a roll of her eyes and a chuckle, Mia says: “Trust me, Navy boy, a sword fight on the ground is _nothing_ compared to a sword fight at sea.”

The reaction one of the captains has to this information is… strange, to say the least. I wonder if her emotions have taken control of her as she takes a deep breath, righting herself.

“Where did you get that?” she asks, not opening her eyes.

“This is a book of medicinal herbs and other such information I procured in the monastery,” I explain, my gaze moving to Benji, who has his nose almost pressed against the page. “Where it came from originally, I do not know. I assume Benji told you about my identity as well, correct?”

“Yes, yes. A man of god has no place among pirates and thieves, brother,” Lake says as she helps Mia back to her feet. 

“Good thing I am no longer a man of God, then. I cut my ties to the church last night,” I say, looking to Benji quickly and then back to the two women again. I hope they do not take notice of my body betraying me.

“Wait, that’s right! My watch!” Benji exclaims, his face lighting up for a moment, before his expression crumples and he buries his face in his hands before muttering: “I’m wearing my nightshirt and those  _ bastards  _ took all my valuables.”

I pat him on the shoulder. He appears to be genuinely upset at this news. 

“Anyway… back to the topic at hand here, lads,” Lake says. Beside her, Mia seems to have come back to life for the moment.

“That’s Calypso’s mark,” Mia says simply, sliding her hand inside her own loose white blouse and withdrawing a silver piece on a string tied around her neck. It is identical to one of the images on the page, although the writing on it appears a bit different. “This has been passed down in my family for generations. We’re said to have descended from the union between Calypso and Davy Jones, and it’s said my ancestors changed their surname to avoid the association, but… as with all things magical, it’s simply a myth, savvy?”

“Or… perhaps this is fate bringing us together,” Benji says, resting his fingers on his chin. “There’s got to be a reason this has all come together the way it has. I don’t believe this was coincidental or an accident.”

“But, hypothetically speaking,” Lake says, taking a few steps toward one of the windows, mirroring Benji’s stance, “and I  _ cannot  _ believe you kept this from me all this time, my love… but  _ what if _ that magical union you talked about  _ was  _ real? What if there are more of Calypso’s treasures for us to find? And what if they have some sort of… magical powers? Oh, this is so exciting I can barely stand it!”

As soon as she said this, Mia and Benji began to chatter about it loudly. What a curious thing to speculate on… 

I have heard the legend of Calypso and Davy Jones, how he, a mortal sailor, was tasked with ferrying those who died at sea to the next life via the Flying Dutchman in return for Calypso’s love, allowed on land only once every decade to see her before he had to continue on with his task at sea. But when she never came to see him, he plotted with the Brethren Court to bind her to a flesh prison with the Pieces of Eight and take her power as the goddess of the seas. The guilt from that action had caused him to cut out his own heart and placed it in a chest, and soon, he would become an unfeeling beast, feared by men. 

When Calypso had learned of her lover’s betrayal and the Brethren Court reconvened, Calypso tricked one of the Pirate Lords to release her from her confines, and it was then that she unleashed her unbridled wrath, creating a maelstrom in the sea in which hundreds perished for the sins committed by the Pirate Lords. It was also then when Davy Jones’ heart was pierced, and finally, he perished, released from his duties, and another captain of the Flying Dutchman took charge. This happened almost sixty years ago. I had heard about the storm it caused; I do not doubt its veracity. False gods be damned.

“It was real,” I say, and the chatter around me ceases immediately. “The Brethren Court convened at Shipwreck Island, off the coast of San Juan. Where I come from, they speak of a maelstrom that happened at that time that had been caused by Calypso’s wrath. It is not a myth. And that explains why this book would have Calypso’s mark in it, as well.”

Mia and Lake look at each other, quiet for many moments as if they instead exchange messages between each other via telepathic connection. 

“All right. Let’s set the course for Shipwreck Island, then,” Mia says with a grin as she put a foot up on one of the steps. “In the meantime, you two get dressed. Felix should be cooking us up something for lunch in a moment. And afterward, we start your training. Either of you ever sword fight before?”

“Well, I have… held a knife before, if that counts for anything,” I say.

“I’m… competent,” Benji says, jumping into a stance and waving an air sword about. 

With a roll of her eyes and a chuckle, Mia says: “Trust me, Navy boy, a sword fight on the ground is  _ nothing  _ compared to a sword fight at sea.”

“It’s true. You’re at war with the person you’re fighting  _ and  _ gravity,” Lake said in a sing-song voice. “Anyway, toodle-oo!”

The captains retreat up the stairs to the main deck, their hats swaying with each step. 

“Ugh, I did  _ not  _ sleep enough to be dealing with all this nonsense,” Benji says as we shuffle down the corridor to our quarters. He lowers his voice before continuing. “I can’t wait to finally put some real clothes on, though. When I left your room, I met some twat named Andrew and he started giving me trouble so that’s how I ended up in this whole… mess.”

“If he gives you any more trouble…” I say, opening the door to my room, “perhaps I can speak with him.”

“No, I can handle him. Unless you’re going to hit him with your Bible like you did to that other oaf. That was hilarious, now that I think back on it,” Benji says with a wide grin. “Anyway, see you around.”

He disappears before I can fire back a retort, and so I enter my room, too. I look down at myself and realize I am still wearing the clothes Benji had purchased for us at the brothel, and I suspect that they are whore’s clothes despite their rather unassuming appearance. With a sigh, I open my wardrobe to find several clothing options. I have grown so accustomed to wearing my habit that I have almost forgotten how normal people dress themselves.

I choose one of the loose white shirts and slip it on, feeling a bit immodest due to the deep v-cut that exposes my chest. Over that I put on a long dark green vest with gold floral design that reaches past my knees, not bothering to button it up, and pair this with dark trousers. I tie a sash of dark green cloth around my waist, followed by a black leather belt, along with a white bandana around my head to keep my curls out of my eyes and examine myself in the tiny mirror upon my desk. This will have to suffice. As I step into my black leather boots, I pray that I will quickly get used to these clothes and feel less like a court jester. Before I leave, I put on my wide-brimmed hat with a feather stuck into it, hoping the wind does not sweep it away.

When I exit the room, seeing the corridor empty, I exhale as I make my way to the upper deck. I see the captains chatting amongst each other with a man I do not recognize. He introduces himself as Andrew, his dark gaze seeming to pierce through me like a lance.

“Looking good, Victor,” Lake says, waving her hands with excitement like the branches on trees when the wind blows past. “You’ll have your share of wenches… or buccaneers, if you’re into that. You seem like you would be.”

My face flushes as I open my mouth to retort, only to have the loud footsteps behind me cut me off mid-thought. 

As I turn to face the source of the noise, I see Benji ascending the stairs, and it appears as if time itself has slowed to a glacial pace. There is no music playing, simply the sound of the ocean crashing about, but I somehow hear a soft choir and string instruments playing in my mind as Benji appears, his face now smooth and shaven, dressed in his short burgundy jacket with silver accents, which is cinched at the waist to accentuate his figure and finished with a black belt. He has left the top of his jacket undone, showing off the black shirt underneath along with a bit of his chest that I have to force myself to look away from. Similarly to me, he has a pair of dark trousers as well, along with short dark boots. And of course, he chose an asymmetrical wide-brimmed hat to finish off the look. I can feel my mouth go dry as I watch him for far too long.

He smiles at me as he swaggers onto the deck, but his face falls when he sees Andrew with the captains. I watch them curiously for a moment, remembering what Benji had said to me earlier. But when Andrew greets him, offering him an apology for wanting to throw him overboard, Benji grudgingly accepts his hand. For now, there are no more secrets among the crew, and I pray it stays that way. 

A moment later, Felix rings the bell to alert us that it is time for lunch. I will admit I am looking forward to seeing that silly little monkey again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of the 2 chapter update; as usual, hope you enjoyed and I'm curious to hear ya'll's thoughts! See you next update! 1 comment = 1 Venji having a good time.


	9. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 12 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Atlantic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benji and Victor spar (aka the sexy homoerotic sword fight).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “What is it you said about not doing up the bravado?” he asks me as he retrieves his weapon.
> 
> “I didn’t make as much of a show of it as you,” I say. He doesn’t need to know that if he pins me one more time I’ll need to excuse myself. “All right, one more go.”

I watch Victor from a distance as we circle each other on the upper deck, cutlasses in hand, like two wolves around a carcass, daring the other to make a move so he can pounce and finish him. He shows no intention of moving. So I lunge toward him. He knocks the sword from my hand. It lands beside the mast with a _clang._ The Jolly Roger flying above mocks me.

Panicking, I scramble after it. I hear him pursue me. The metal touches my hand. And my chin.

He stands over me, sword at my throat. I realize I’m between him and the mast; I have nowhere to go. Slowly, I raise my hands in surrender, but he doesn’t remove the tip of the cutlass from my neck. Instead, he presses it against the underside of my chin, guiding me into a standing position. 

When I’m finally upright, Victor raises the sword even further, forcing me to look up at him. I inhale a sharp breath as he steps closer to me. 

Another step. And another. Until we stand eye to eye, his sword arm bent, and he pins me against the smooth wooden surface with his taller body, just like his namesake. I can see the sparkle in his irises as he smiles before finally letting his arm drop.

“Let us go again,” Victor says, shaking his head with a laugh as he wipes his brow with the back of his hand, “you give up too easily.”

“You’re a trickster,” I say, rolling my eyes as I lean over to retrieve my sword from the deck. “If you hadn’t knocked my sword from my hand right from the start--”

“An enemy will not concern himself with fair play,” Victor retorts, fanning himself as he gets back into position. “You should be prepared for anything.”

“I know, I know. It’s just a pain to lose to someone who’d never properly held a sword until last week,” I say, flipping my own sword artfully before getting into position, too. “All those years of sparring… and for what?”

“Spare me your fancy tricks,” Victor says with a grin as he lunges toward me.

This time, I block him and our swords _clang_ together before jumping apart like bolts of electricity. He swings again, leaving himself open. I take my chance and jab him. He contorts around the tip before swiping at my side again. I roll out of the way. 

As soon as I land back on my feet, I hear him behind me. I turn and block. He grunts and goes again. And I block again. 

I realize I’d rolled toward the area below the forecastle deck. If I maneuver right, I can pin him between me and the wall. I grin and swipe and turn a bit. Two more times, and we’ve reversed positions.

One more jab and he backs up, smacking his spine against the wall. Pleased, I hold my cutlass over his heart with a smirk. 

“My point,” I say. “But I’ll have mercy on you. I don’t need to do up the bravado like you do.”

“It was a lucky shot.”

His mouth scrunches to the side as he drops his sword and raises his hands with a wink. I sigh as I press the point of the cutlass into his chest for good measure, tipping my head to the side when he simply allows it, before I release him. The way his white shirt has turned translucent with sweat, sticking to his lean, muscled frame serves as nothing more than a source of distraction. I hope my trousers don’t betray me.

“What is it you said about not doing up the bravado?” he asks me as he retrieves his weapon.

“I didn’t make as much of a show of it as you,” I say. He doesn’t need to know that if he pins me one more time I’ll need to excuse myself. “All right, one more go.”

“Make this a good one, Benjamin,” he teases, heaving. I don’t know why he thought of calling me by my full name to rile me, but it works almost _too_ well.

Getting back into my stance, I watch him, taking a cautious step forward. He does the same. I swipe. He leaps back. His eyes dart about as he steps to the side. I can see what he’s trying to do.

He swipes once, twice, thrice in succession. I avoid two of the swipes, but the third grazes my arm. My attention falters. When I look at the wound for a split-second, he lunges toward me. He grazes my stomach. I stumble. 

His barrages continue in quick succession again. I manage to avoid and block most of them. But I know I will run out of stamina soon. 

Another step forward, and this time he swipes at my legs. I leap over his sword before rolling away. When I rise, I hear his breath directly in my ear.

Fingers thread through my hair, pulling my head away to expose my neck. Against my flesh, he presses the side of his blade. A trickle of blood drips down from where he nicks me. But I don’t feel any pain.

All I feel is his strong chest pressed against my back. His heart is beating as fast as mine. I wonder if it’s from exertion or from his knowledge that I am extremely aroused, my trousers becoming uncomfortably tight. 

My eyes flutter closed and I drop my weapon, my hand limp. We stand like that for a moment, breathing heavily, before he slowly pulls his cutlass away, sheathing it.

I swallow thickly. My parched insides need water. 

“Good fight,” I say, my voice hoarse.

“Yes, you as well,” he says, clapping me on the shoulder but refusing to meet my eyes. He shrugs on his long vest and buttons it up, which is a strange thing to do when one is sweating. I eye him for a moment as I shake my head.

Sighing, I pick up my sword and sheath it, too, before grabbing Victor by the arm and dragging him down into the lower deck to quench our thirst and nourish our bodies after the workout we had just endured. Perhaps it would be of use to bandage my wounds, too, I realize. As the adrenaline begins to wear off, I begin to feel the stinging of the salty air against my open flesh. 

For good measure, I glance down at the front of my trousers, exhaling relief when I see that nothing is noticeable. 

We meet the rest of the crew in the kitchen. Lake and Mia appear deep in conversation and are behaving as if no one else is around them, their heads all but glued together. Meanwhile, Felix has his legs draped over Andrew’s lap as he scoops his soup with a piece of bread while explaining the difference between a crocodile and an alligator to Andrew as the other looks off in the distance, as if he is attempting to do a complicated maths equation in his mind.

Victor and I sit at our respective spots at the table as Jack swats at us from beneath the table. The little monkey screeches before climbing up Andrew’s leg and then across the bridge of Felix’s legs, finally resting on his shoulder. Andrew shakes his head as Jack begins rummaging through Felix’s hair searching for insects. I watch this curiously for a moment before I realize the rumbling in my stomach and scarf down my food.

“Who won this time?” Andrew asks us, rubbing circles on Felix’s legs.

“Who do you think?” I say, before taking a bite of soup. It’s a bit bland but edible. I dip a piece of bread in it. 

“Victor,” Andrew and Felix say simultaneously. 

“Damn it, why do I keep betting on Benji even though we both know he’s going to lose? Curse my need to support the underdog,” Felix whines, before passing a coin across the table to Andrew and crossing his arms over his chest like a frustrated toddler. 

“It’s all right, my love. That’s what I love about you. You have a big heart,” Andrew says, squeezing Felix’s shoulder, before Jack screeches and swats him away.

I cannot help but smile at the two of them as I eat, pleased at least that they can be happy together on this ship without the fear of judgment. If only I were that fortunate. I glance to my side to see Victor hunched over his bowl eating quietly. My neck begins to sting. I wince.

“Hey, lighten up,” I say, nudging Victor with my elbow. “You won.”

The soup has done wonders for my throat and despite my body heating up from our sparring session, the heartiness satisfies me. It gets cold out on the water so anything warm feels pleasant in my stomach and helps me forget the sharpness of the wind. 

Victor glances at me from the corner of his eye, adjusting his vest over his lap. He drinks up the last bits of his soup before setting his bowl aside, content. 

“This was lovely, Felix. Thank you,” Victor says, before he rises from his seat. “Now if you all will excuse me, I have some… studying to attend to.”

Jack screeches and leaps off Felix’s head, dashing after him.

Before he leaves, he looks back at me. I can’t read his expression, but his eyes seem darker than normal, his pupils blending in with the irises surrounding them. I want to go after him but knowing him, all I’ll accomplish is further irritating him. 

For the past week or so, we’ve gotten on well, becoming rather close friends. But at times like this, when he gets into one of his moods as if I’ve done something to him, I don’t know how to react. Although I also know any attempts at forcing him to tell me what’s wrong will be met with the firm, fortified stone wall of resistance.

I simply wish he would talk to me instead of retreating like a doe frightened by the shots of a hunter. And I am not a hunter. But perhaps today I should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was a trip to write but I hope ya'll enjoy it lol. It got very spicy and the next one is EVEN spicier in some way. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chap and Vic's pov is coming up in the next one. 1 comment = 1 requited venji feel.


	10. Victor Salazar - 12 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Atlantic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor does something sacrilegious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I’m not in a mood,” Benji mutters.
> 
> “What’s that, Navy boy?” Lake all but shouts in his ear.
> 
> “I _said_ I’m not in a mood,” Benji says, louder this time.

There is no way I will ever have peace on this ship, or anywhere, for that matter, so long as Benji is near. 

I retreat to my room, hiding myself away like a bear looking to hibernate for months on end. Being alone is preferable to seeing him -- the way his eyes take on a mischievous glow when he japes, the way his hair falls in his face like ivy draping down the side of a hanging vase, the way his muscles ripple when he moves, and the way his expression goes blank when he knows I have bested him at swords yet again and so, he submits. 

It is not the same when he spars with the others, I have realized. But between us there is a fire, a spark of lightning, like what happens when a volcano erupts and the ash crashes against itself and creates nothing but light and heat in the billowing black clouds in the sky. 

Perhaps it would do me well to find another sparring partner, so I do not observe him again and feel the need to give into my basest urges. I want to touch him, but I should not. And at least I am no longer a man of God, so I can allow myself to have some release, or else I know it will continue to gnaw at me like a termite at wood, over and over again, until the structure collapses in on itself. But I also know I will rub myself raw and it will still not quell my urges. 

As I stare out the window into the azure sky, I picture Benji as I hold my sword to his throat, his face placid like a lush green forest untouched by human hands, showing no sign of disturbance or disquiet. He knows I had many opportunities to end his life and took none of them. And even with a blade in my hand he trusts me.

My body shudders and then I feel the hollowness, the guilt at what I had done immediately before that moment digging out my insides and depositing them into the sea. But the guilt does not last as long as before. Each time it seems to lessen. I do not know if I should be pleased or disturbed by my own actions or with the fact that the shame recedes like the sand with the tide as the waves pull it back with the rest of the water until the beach is made anew, repurposed and displaced.

With a sigh, I wipe my hand with a kerchief and do up my trousers again before sitting at my desk. I ask once again for forgiveness and open my Bible. Perhaps I require a reminder of what sorts of consequences can befall me if I continue on this path.

The two passages from Leviticus, 1 Timothy, Romans, a few others… I open each of them and rip out the pages, setting them aside on the desk. When I read them, I turn the words over in my mind. 

I had never internalized them as much as some of my colleagues at the monastery, truthfully. The prayers, yes. But when it came to memorizing passages, I could not be bothered to do so. Yet still, I struggle with many of the teachings. We did not learn them with a critical eye. 

It appears significantly easier to simply accept that I am, as every other man on this earth, a sinner and that I can do nothing about it. The energy I expend lamenting drains me like a slaughtered lamb hung upside down as its blood pools below it before it goes to the butcher. 

What use do I have for this? At least when I allow myself to act on instinct only, I do not fear the dull pain of disappointment; it is only when my rational mind returns that I realize my error. Or perhaps it is not my rational brain but my spiritual brain. Is there a difference? Why else would God give us reason, but to decide that for ourselves? All this thinking has tired me. My first mistake was to question.

Or perhaps it is no mistake at all. 

After poring over this book for three years, I have absorbed from it all I could like a lily planted in rocky soil where it rarely rains. Any more would be excess. I go to the window above my bed and open it. Then I carry the Bible and the torn pages to it. I throw them all out the window, watching as the pieces of parchment flap about in the wind like the wings of seagulls -- or perhaps doves? -- and the book, the holiest of books, plops gracelessly into the sea and out of sight to join the unknown creatures of the depths.

Although I feel light, I hope God will forgive me for that. Perhaps he already had.

We arrive at Shipwreck Island in the late afternoon and I join the rest of the crew to disembark after a week at sea. I look forward to stretching my legs on dry land, lest we not have the chance to do so for a long while after this trip.

When I spot Benji walking down the corridor, hands buried in his pockets. For some silly reason, I wonder if he knows that I had been thinking about him just a moment ago. I touch his shoulder. He pauses his stride with a frown, eyes darting to mine for a second before he looks away.

“Benji,” I say before he has a chance to properly shrug me off him, feeling my lips curling into a small smile, “I want to apologize for being so cold to you lately. It was cruel of me to do so.”

He tips his head to the side and presses his lips together. His eyebrows dig into the tops of his eyes. 

“I don’t understand you,” he says, the words burning as if he had smacked me instead of speaking. That would have been preferable.

“What do you mean?” I ask; I have an inkling but I want to hear him say it.

“Now we’re friends again after you basically ignored me over lunch?” he says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Friends don’t ignore each other. We’ve gone through some shit together so I thought we were confidants… You saved my life, Victor. I’ll never be able to repay you.”

“We had just finished sparring and I was exhausted,” I say, beginning to walk toward the stairs to the upper deck. We are already delayed in disembarking. And I particularly detest the implication that Benji owes me anything for helping him. “You know I am not particularly talkative then.”

With a groan, he follows me up the stairs. 

“This was different. I know when you’re ignoring me and when you’re simply tired. Do I look like a fool to you?”

“I have many things on my mind,” I say with a shrug. 

“Like what? Tell me,” he says, almost pleading. 

_ You, _ I think, but instead I say: “I wonder if it was a good idea to board this ship. I do not know if these people can be trusted.” Not entirely a lie.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit ridiculous?” he asks, his gaze softening a bit as we approach the group waiting in the dinghy, minus Felix, who remained to man the ship. 

“Would you not know better than all of us what betrayal feels like?” I ask him. “Perhaps that is a good lesson for you.”

The moment I say the words, I realize my mistake. He blinks several times and swallows, pulling at the corner of his eye. The wound is still fresh.

“You’re right,” he says quietly, turning away and climbing into the boat beside Andrew. 

With the sensation of a knife pierced and twisted in my chest, I take the remaining seat across from Benji, watching him as he looks everywhere but at me. I had simply wanted him to stop prying, and instead I had shown him that I cannot be trusted, either. 

“What’s gotten into you two?” Lake says after a few moments of silence as they make their way to the island. “Another lover’s quarrel?”

My face flushes as I look out toward the  _ Rainbow Horizon  _ as it shrinks into the distance. Benji says nothing.

“It was not a lover’s quarrel,” I say. “We were simply… having a discussion.”

Benji shoots me a pointed glare. 

“Ah yes, the infamous not-a-lover’s-quarrel-but-a-discussion, I am familiar with those. Right, Mia?” Lake says.

“Aye,” Mia says, stare landing on Lake as the wind whips through her curly hair. “If it was truly a discussion, you would both be fine and not in a...  _ mood _ .”

“I’m not in a mood,” Benji mutters.

“What’s that, Navy boy?” Lake all but shouts in his ear.

“I  _ said  _ I’m not in a mood,” Benji says, louder this time.

“All right, as much as I love… communication, can we save this discussion for another time?” Andrew says, shaking his head as he rows the boat. “I don’t want to be in the middle of this.”

“You know what would be a good idea?” Lake says, and Mia’s eyes widen.

“No, Lake, please don’t--”

“We’re not letting you two back on the ship until you apologize and make up or whatever you need to do to get you to be talking to each other again,” Lake says.

“Don’t listen to her, I have veto power,” Mia says, shaking her hands in front of her. “We aren’t going to leave you stranded. Leave no man behind.”

“I like that idea,” Andrew says. 

My face feels numb at the thought of being left on a deserted island with only Benji to keep me company. Benji glares at me as if to say “ _ This is all your fault” _ and I am beginning to believe that it is.

“Don’t worry, we’ll come back for you,” Lake says with a wave of her hand. “Eventually.”

The boat breaks through onto the sandy shore, and we hop out into the knee-deep blue water and stomp ashore, our clothes heavy with salt and sopping. Andrew pulls the boat in, letting it rest on the beach away from the tide so the sea does not rob us of it.

“We’ll deal with you two later,” Mia says, “but for now, let’s find this thing… Andrew, are you sure this is the right place?”

“Yes,” he says, before frowning. “We need to go from the other side, though.”

Andrew opens his leather satchel and withdraws a piece of parchment, unfurling it as we walk. I move beside him, curious. On the map is an atoll shaped like a crescent, and at the opposite area from which we came (the inner part of the crescent), is what looks like a drawing of hundreds of ships smashed together.

“The other side is all reef and cliffs, so coming from this way is easier,” Andrew explains, “even if we have to cut through a bit of jungle to get to it. And that’s probably why so many ships… get wrecked.”

He chuckles at his own joke before pocketing the map again. I raise an eyebrow as we step through the underbrush of the jungle, using my cutlass to slash and hack away the overgrown green vines and plants blocking the way while hoping none of them are poisonous. The others do the same.

Once the jungle clears, we reach the opposite end of the atoll, where, just as in the image on the map, a mass of ships all stacked upon each other into a heap, a mountain rising from the sea, juts out from the cliffs. Sure enough, the drop below is steep, and I can see the white and pink and glowing green of the coral reef peeking through the waves. Reefs are not meant to glow...

“This was too easy,” Lake says with a smirk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope ya'll enjoyed these 2 chapters! Things are getting a lil messier and will continue to do so... As usual, thanks for reading and supporting and 1 comment = 1 Venji not being complete disasters! See you in the next update!


	11. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 12 May, 1787; Shipwreck Cove, Shipwreck Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benji finds some treasure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Oh relax, we aren’t going to take all of it,” Lake says as she returns to the hall with handfuls of coins. She had placed as many as she could carry into her satchel, and gives the remainder to Victor and me. “Here, take some.”
> 
> “I don’t want to hear any complaints, savvy?” Mia says from the tunnel. “And I counted all the pieces so lose one and you’ll be sorry.”

“What do we say when things are too easy,  _ cherie _ ?” Mia says, scanning our surroundings. She grips her cutlass tightly, branding it as if she expects something to leap out at her.

“That something  _ bad  _ will happen,” Lake says with a pout. 

“Right. So everyone… keep your guards up, all right?” Mia commands.

I nod, following suit as my eyes rove about, until I land on Victor, who is gazing off in the direction of the reef. At this moment, I have nothing to say to him and I would be happy to never look at him or speak to him ever again.

As soon as that thought formulates, piling up in my mind like a stack of bricks, I want to knock it down. It’s even more frustrating knowing I don’t mean it. 

_ Please  _ look at me.  _ Please  _ talk to me. I’d already asked and as usual, his tactic is to avoid and run away like gazelle chased by a lion on the savannah. Or so I’ve heard.

Perhaps I will play the game, too, then. If he wants to avoid and ignore me, I’ll avoid and ignore him in return. I know it’s childish. And I know I won’t last particularly long in that. But he seems immune to any other forms of logic and reason.

“Victor? You with us?” Mia asks, and Victor jolts back to his surroundings, as if he had been beneath the waves instead of standing atop a cliff, gazing into the depths of the sea. 

“Hm? Yes. I was simply observing the reef; I never knew they could glow,” Victor says.

“Reefs don’t glow,” Andrew says, rolling his eyes. He walks down the wooden bridge connecting the cliff to the giant mountain of ships. “Let’s go.”

Raising an eyebrow, I watch as Victor follows the other, raising his gaze to me for a moment as I look away. I turn to the edge of the cliff, the wind whistling through my hair and causing my jacket to billow, threatening to tear it from my body. He’s right: the reef  _ is  _ glowing. I stare, transfixed, unable to look away, the glow seeming to radiate just above the waves. It calls to me and for a moment I contemplate listening to the voice, before I take back control of my body, shaking my head to clear it.  _ No.  _

I swallow the lump in my throat, holding my hands out in front of me and examining them. The one objective truth I now know is that  _ something  _ strange is occurring here.

Casting one more glance over my shoulder, I jog to catch up to the others, who have already entered the mountain. 

“Welcome to Shipwreck City!” Lake says, stretching her arms out wide within a hall with high ceilings composed of the remnants of ships, built in an imperfect way that still let in a bit of light and water..

She stands before a massive table, made from a piece of the deck from a once great ship, engraved and painted with a compass and large enough to seat at least fifty people. Above them hangs an iron chandelier holding hundreds of candles, only a few of which are still lit. The last pirates to visit here are long gone. In that case, we should not have any guests. But I keep my sword up, just in case.

“Andrew, a little help here? Where do we even start? This place is huge,” Mia says, walking around the table. 

“Relax, I got it. You’re in good hands,” Andrew says.

Behind it, I see several entrances to tunnels. Where they lead, I have no idea. I wander over to Andrew as he withdraws his map again. He flips it over, revealing a smaller, more specific map showing Shipwreck City. Victor joins the huddle around the map and I instinctively feel myself drifting toward him. I curse myself for that. Our hands brush against each other and I pull away too quickly.

“Does anyone know what this treasure even looks like? Aside from having that weird symbol on it?” Lake asks. “What use is a map if we don’t know what we’re looking for?”

“It could be more coins like what I have,” Mia suggests, “or it could be other items, like how Benji said he had a pocket watch with the mark on it. We simply need to find all the places they keep treasure here and go through it.”

“Expecting to go to a pirate city and to go through every piece of treasure is a death wish,” Andrew says. “We’ll be here for years. It’s all either been looted or hidden so well we’ll never find it.”

“I don’t care,” Mia says. She snatches the map from his hand. “It looks like each of these tunnels is a treasure trove. Then a few more of them lead deeper. Each of you pick a tunnel and see what you can find. Where’s Jack Sparrow’s compass when you need it…?” she mutters that part more to herself than anyone else.

Then she shoves the map back into Andrew’s hand before marching into one of the tunnels behind the table without hesitation. I can already tell this will be a Sisyphean effort and will bear no fruit, but I don’t want anymore conflict. The threat of being left on this island still weighs in the back of my mind. Perhaps if I comply they’ll change their minds.

Traipsing through one of the unoccupied tunnels, I see the light begin to fade but not enough to cause me to lose sight of what is at the end. My boots splash against the mud and the small layer of water beneath me. It smells of damp. The remnants of light glint off what appears to be a large chest of yellow coins.  _ Gold _ … I take one of them and run out of the tunnel, holding it up to the sky so the light can shine on it properly. There is something familiar about the design, with a skull in the middle surrounded by what look like the rays of the sun emanating from the center. 

Humming, I put the coin between my teeth and bite down. When I remove it to examine it, I see the deep bite marks that result from my mistreatment. What a curious thing…

“I found something!” I call and wait for the others to return. When they’ve gathered around me, I smirk proudly. “Look. Real gold. And there’s way more where that came from.”

“Huh. With the bite marks and everything,” Lake says, examining the coin, before holding it up for Victor, Andrew and Mia to see.

“This is even better than that silly Calypso treasure,” Mia says with a grin before she turns to me. “Show me where you found this.”

Motioning toward the tunnel I had entered previously, I walk with them to show them the trove. Victor stays back, his eyes downcast as he crosses his arms over his chest. 

“There has to be a reason why this chest full of gold coins was left here when none of the other tunnels had anything of value,” Victor says before he leans back against the wall where the tunnel entrances lie. “I do not like the sensation of this place.”

Pausing to think about it, I realize Victor may be right. The reef, the fact that we  _ happened  _ to come across a chest full of gold… It seemed too good to be true. As upset as I had been by Victor earlier, I value our lives over my own emotions at this point. 

“Victor’s right,” I say, glancing to him with a nod. “No one just leaves a chest of gold lying around. Something has to be wrong with it.”

“Oh relax, we aren’t going to take all of it,” Lake says as she returns to the hall with handfuls of coins. She had placed as many as she could carry into her satchel, and gives the remainder to Victor and me. “Here, take some.”

“I don’t want to hear any complaints, savvy?” Mia says from the tunnel. “And I counted all the pieces so lose one and you’ll be sorry.”

Reluctantly, I take a few and pocket them. Where they touch my thigh, I feel a pulsating burn. Hissing, I remove them immediately. When I peek down at my leg, I realize that nothing has happened. Scratching my head, I slip them into the pocket of my belt instead.

“This trip didn’t turn out to be a waste after all,” Mia says with a grin as she returns. “I guess we can get out of here, huh.”

As we leave, I watch Victor turning one of the coins over and over again in his hand as if he intends to hypnotize himself with it. When he looks up, I don’t look away. 

“Benji…” Victor says, pocketing the coin. “I wish I did not need to continually apologize to you. But I  _ am  _ sorry for how I have behaved toward you as of late. I should not have blamed you for that which was done to you.”

“Thank you,” I say. Still not an explanation, but a start. “Perhaps I overestimate our closeness. I should be more understanding of the fact that you may not want to share everything with me. We’ve only known each other for a week, after all.”

“That is true,” he says with a soft smile. “And thank you for backing me earlier, even if it did not amount to much since we were outnumbered.”

Chuckling, I nudge him with my elbow. “It’s not your fault. When people see gold all reason simply goes out the window.”

“Greed is a powerful feeling,” Victor says as he adjusts his floppy hat and looks away. “I pray it does not lead us down a path we do not want to be upon.”

I can think of another powerful feeling as my eyes trail down from his face to the exposed strip of brown flesh poking out from beneath his vest. Hoping he doesn’t notice my gaping, I close my mouth.

We arrive outside the city and the sky is dark now. The moon has shown itself, white and shining and full, casting its light down upon us as the final rays of sunlight leave, too.

In that moment, the earth shakes beneath our feet, sending us tumbling to our knees. From the cliffs, some rocks detach themselves and plummet into the inky darkness below. Before us, where the reef glowed more strongly now, confirming my and Victor’s suspicion that it does in fact glow, the sea opens up, a trench dropping down to the seafloor and exposing the glowing coral. The water begins to spin round and round, creating a vortex stretching from one side of the island to the other, sucking in everything around it. The wind picks up simultaneously as the clouds, now dark, grow yellow cross hatches and the thunder booms directly above the maelstrom. 

Frozen in place, all I can do is watch as the fabric of reality tears itself apart, the sky and the sea beginning a war between themselves. I feel a hand around my wrist tugging me away from the cliffs and back toward the jungle. But I cannot stop staring.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Lake shrieks.

“Everyone… get your asses  _ back  _ to the beach. Now!” Mia orders. 

With that, we all turn on our heels and run back to where we had come from.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are popping off!! Hope you enjoyed this part and now onto Victor's POV again...


	12. Victor Salazar - 12 May, 1787; Shipwreck Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew tries their hands at guerilla warfare.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Don’t make us laugh, girl,” says one of the others. “What business do we have fighting children led by an even smaller child?”
> 
> “Haha, very funny,” Mia says, throwing her sword in the air and catching it with ease. “Your funeral.”

We run through the jungle, darting through the areas where we had already trimmed away the overgrowth, constantly looking over our shoulders to ensure that nothing worse is afoot. Up ahead, I see a lone figure approaching us in the moonlight. 

“Mateys! We have a little bit of a… situation!” The figure, which turned out to be Felix, says. Wrapped around his head and tugging at his hair as if he were a steed, Jack the monkey screeches. “Jack can you _please_ be quiet for one second? Thank you.”

“How did you find us, Felix?” Andrew says as he embraces him, kissing him on the cheek as Jack screeches on more time, finally quieting after being shushed.

“I remembered a bit of the map and followed the path you cut through the trees,” Felix explains quickly, “anyway! It’s not a good idea to go back there. We need to retreat. Privateers. They’ve commandeered our ship.”

Lake and Mia glance at each other, paling. 

“We can’t go back. There’s a maelstrom down by Shipwreck City and we fear it may swallow the entire island,” Mia says. “We need to reclaim our ship and get out of here.”

“Some of them followed me ashore but there are a lot of them. At least twelve. We won’t be able to fight them off,” Felix says, patting Jack’s shivering little body. 

“Not if we aren’t strategic we won’t,” Lake says, stroking her chin. “Are you familiar with the Fabian strategy?”

In all my readings I may have come across the idea but the blank looks from all gathered indicate that for the most part we are all equally ignorant. 

“Oh wait, I know what you mean. We have to wear them down. Brilliant,” Mia says. “But we would need to bring them into the jungle or else it won’t work.”

I listen as Lake explains the strategy: we would lead a few at a time into the dense tree cover in the areas we’d already cleared to give ourselves a tactical advantage. Then, when the privateers enter, we pick them off one by one, using the environment to cover ourselves. Not the most honorable method but with our small numbers, it would be the most effective.

All we need now is someone to lure our foes in. 

“I can be the bait,” Felix volunteers, earning a glare from Andrew. “Don’t worry, I run fast, and I’m pretty sure they all hate Jack so they won’t be paying attention to anything else. Trust me. So get ready.”

He does not wait for a response. We unsheathe our swords and find spots behind trees to hide and await the ambush we would inevitably lay. I have never killed a man. Not even in self defense. My hands sweat around the handle of my cutlass, making the leather around it slippery. I do not believe I can look into the eyes of a man before I take his life; I pray I do not need to.

Voices shout from just outside the jungle on the beach, and soon Felix has returned, bolting through the cleared path and leaping over spots that had not yet been fully cut out. I hack and fell one man easily, who dies before his body meets the ground.

In that moment, my own blood pulsates in my ears, coursing through me at the speed of the maelstrom that had opened up not long ago. My vision blurs and I begin to shake. All I see is blood drenching my fingers. The smell, acrid and irony, leaps into my nostrils and I keel over, vomiting beside the body, my throat burning. I spit and wipe my mouth in my shirt before running back behind one of the trees, my vision blurring as the trees turned into letters instead. There is no way I can do that again.

Peeking out from behind the tree, I see at least five more bodies littering the jungle floor. The air falls quiet again aside from the sound of the maelstrom off in the distance. Felix returns from the opposite direction, holding his thumbs high. He sneaks out onto the beach again. From the corner of my eye I see Benji hidden behind the tree beside me, his eyes glazed over, body shuddering. I wonder if this is also his first kill.

A scream and a screech cut through the air on the beach, and we have no choice but to spring into action. Mia and Lake lead us out, swords held high at the ready, and we exit to see Felix with one hand up, sword in the sand, surrounded by six privateers, all with the points of their swords only inches away from him. One wrong move would make a corpse of him.

“Fellas… and ladies... let’s talk it out,” Felix says, holding Jack to his chest as the monkey cowers against him, screeching. “Look, you’re scaring him! If we survive this, he’s gonna have nightmares for weeks!”

“Oi, shut up!” says one of the privateers, his skinny mustache bristling. He wears an eyepatch and has a scar across his lip. 

They turn as we approach, forming a line of five of them, the sixth still holding her sword to Felix’s throat. 

“Is this your idiot?” the woman threatening Felix says.

“Aye,” Mia says, raising her sword a bit higher. Despite her stature, I know now that she knows more than well how to use it. “Give him back and leave us be or we’ll butcher you.”

The privateers break into a fit of jeers and laughter, dropping all sorts of vile epithets on account of her stature and her sex. She stands firm, unfazed. The woman privateer watches her comrades without a word. 

“Don’t make us laugh, girl,” says one of the others. “What business do we have fighting children led by an even smaller child?”

“Haha, very funny,” Mia says, throwing her sword in the air and catching it with ease. “Your funeral.”

She nods to Lake. They charge, artfully dodging and side-stepping the swords of the privateers as they attempt fruitlessly to land strikes on them. I watch as one of the privateer’s swords seem to bounce off Mia as if she had some sort of invisible shield. In the blink of an eye, the two women fell two of the men. They kick aside their lifeless corpses as if they are simply piles of discarded stone. 

Andrew and Benji fall into battle with the other privateers. The remaining one charges toward me as I watch the battle unfold before me. I hold my sword up to block just in time. Then I parry before rolling out of the way of a strong downward swipe that leaves a deep indent in the sand like a scar.

The clanging of metal on metal combined with the sound of the waves lapping at the shore creates an overwhelming cacophony that I attempt to block out unsuccessfully. I dodge another swipe, lunging forward again and sending the privateer into the water. He panics, foot falling into the collapsing sand, and I chase after him as he returns to where his comrades continue their battle. 

I heave, wiping my brow in my sleeve where sweat had accumulated. When I look up to chase after the privateer, I see that the woman, who had kicked over Felix, now falling into battle with Benji. For a moment I watch him in the throes of battle, his damp hair falling in his soft yet angular face, his muscles rippling against his flesh as he blocks another blow. 

And I almost do not notice the privateer approaching him from behind, cutlass drawn, as he pulls his elbow back. 

My heart palpitates in my ear and I fall deaf to every other sound.

“ _Benji!_ ” I shriek, my body finally breaking into action.

Another beat.

But it is too late.

I fall to my knees in the sand.

Another beat.

The sword plunges into his back, sticking out of his chest like a seedling. 

Another beat.

All he can do is stare down at it, eyes wide, the moonlight washing over him, and I see the outline of a skeleton where his flesh should be, glowing blue in the night. His loose white shirt remains white. 

Another beat. 

When the privateer rips out the blade, Benji turns, as if he had not experienced any pain at all, and jams his sword into the man’s throat, watching him gasp and choke on his own blood as he dies on the ground. He then turns to the woman and slices her throat before kicking her aside.

The sound around me returns.

With a final swipe, Lake hacks the last privateer in half, and the beach is littered with the bodies of our foes, their blood coloring the sand black in the moonlight. It is quiet again.

Shaking, I rise to my feet to see Benji approaching me, looking human and not skeletal as he had before, his eyebrows knit together with worry. 

“Victor, are you all right?” he asks me, taking my arm.

As soon as I am upright, I wrap my arms tightly around his back, cradling his head against my neck. For a long while I say nothing. I feel his arms reach around my middle as he grasps at the fabric of my shirt right by my shoulder blades, fingers clinging tightly as he nuzzles against me, his eyelashes tickling my skin as his eyes flutter closed. We stay like that for some time, our breathing evening out and regulating as we listen to the water of the sea.

“I thought they had killed you,” I say against the top of his head. “When that sword went through your chest I thought it was over.”

The soft breath from his nose warms my neck before he replies. “If it’s any consolation, I barely felt it.”

“But how is that possible? It went straight through your heart.”

He pulls away, and I let my hands drop to my sides, already missing the close contact between our bodies. When he pulls up the front of his shirt, exposing the area on his chest where he had taken the sword only moments before, nothing remains. No blood. No perforation. Not even a mark.

In the moonlight, I see the faint outline of his skeleton under his skin again, as if his skin has become translucent. My gaze traveling downward, I examine my own flesh as well. I can see the bone in my hand, glowing from within. When I raise it to get a closer look, I realize we both have the same affliction, whatever it may be. 

“Hmm…” I say, stepping back and pulling out the dagger from my belt. “I need to see something.”

Benji gasps as I plunge the dagger into my own hand. But again, no blood leaves the wound. When I withdraw the blade, the place where it had been seals up immediately.

“What the hell?” Benji mutters.

“You two done having your moment?” Lake asks as she rubs her hands together and makes her way back to the dinghy in which he had arrived.

I watch her and, upon closer inspection, I see the moonlight making her skin translucent as well. When Mia, Andrew and Felix arrive, I note that Mia and Andrew have the same affliction, but Felix still looks human. 

Before I can ponder further, Mia ushers us back into the boats.

“Let’s go get our ship back.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thank you for reading once again! That's all for the updates today. Did you expect this? Let me know in the comments. 1 comment = 1 Venji getting to be happy and together! See you next update!


	13. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 13 May, 1787; Shipwreck Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew returns to the _Rainbow Horizon_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “So this is what saved my life,” I say.
> 
> “Yes. I believe so. And it seems that they are made from Aztec gold, which can only mean one thing: this is the same curse that afflicted the _Black Pearl_ all those years ago. We must return all of the coins to Shipwreck Island. Which I realize is easier said than done.”

Off in the distance, where our ship sits anchored in the sea outside of the shallow reef area, a much larger ship rests beside it, with boards spanning between the two vessels to link them. 

The _Rainbow Horizon_ is burning.

While the fire is small for now, it’s only a matter of time before it grows into a spectacular beast and finishes it for good. The irony of a ship burning down in the middle of the water will never be lost on me. I glance to the sky. The universe is truly a jester sometimes. 

Victor and I have taken the boat back with Felix, his skinny arms moving us across the water at a surprisingly quick pace; Andrew and the captains are only a few feet ahead of us. 

As we draw closer, I can see the shadows of figures illuminated from behind by the dancing flames darting back and forth over the bridges they had laid, carrying with them what looked like armfuls of bottles. They smashed the bottles in the fire, causing it to erupt with blue and purple flames. I gritted my teeth. There’s no way the ship will survive this.

No one aboard seems to notice our approach, as they are too busy laying siege to our ship to look out into the water to see the prodigal return of its rightful crew. We enter via the opposite side’s entrance so as to not alert the privateers to our arrival.

I take note of the Jolly Roger flying atop the other ship’s mast and under it another flag with the familiar image of the Union Jack upon it. The sight makes me spit into the water, seething.

We enter, swords at the ready, and cross the deck to assess the damage. A few of the privateers notice our arrival and spring into battle, drawing their swords. We fell them easily, tossing their bodies into the inky blackness below. 

One of the coins from my belt pocket falls out onto the deck. After slicing a man’s neck, I lean over to pick up the coin and place it back where it belongs.

Perhaps now that I know I can take a sword to the chest without losing my life, it has made me bolder. I proceed to kick aside one of the wooden bridges, sending it plummeting down along with the bodies, hearing the splash and the sickening _thunk_ of wood hitting flesh and bone.

After Andrew raises anchor and we kick away the rest of the bridges and kill the remaining privateers aboard our ship, we make our escape, narrowly avoiding the strike of cannon fire. 

And somehow, the _Rainbow Horizon_ is still intact.

Lake stands among the flames, risking being burnt, her hair sizzling as she steers the ship, full speed ahead, away from Shipwreck Cove and out into the Atlantic again. 

Before the privateer ship can react, we are already knots away, their ship disappearing into the distance as we sail away into the night. But we can’t rest yet.

All night, we work tirelessly to fill hundreds up hundreds of buckets with water in an attempt to contain the flames. At first it doesn’t appear to be particularly effective, until after the entire night’s labor, the flames finally subside as the first fingers of light break on the horizon. When the fire is finally out, with only the smoke and stench of burnt wood left behind, we can finally rest.

Dragging my feet to my quarters, I then proceed to all but drop myself into my bed, not even bothering to change into my nightshirt or cover myself. I fall asleep in my filthy, sandy clothes.

I don’t know how long I slept 

The sound of banging on my door and cursing wakes me but I do not open my eyes.

“ _Hey_! Let me in! I know you’re in there!” comes Lake’s voice from the other side of the door. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of explaining to do!”

Groaning, I sit up, wondering what I could have possibly done wrong this time. I clutch my head for a moment before pushing myself to my feet. 

“What do you want?” I ask as I wrench open the door.

“Oh _no_ you don’t. Watch your tone because I am _this_ close to throwing you overboard for real this time!” Lake says, holding her thumb and index fingers a millimeter apart.

Clearing my throat, I cross my arms over my chest. “I’m _sorry._ What would you like, _captain_?”

“You may have fooled Mia and the rest of the crew into believing you’re innocent and you have nothing to do with the British but I _know_ those privateers didn’t just happen upon us. Someone on this ship has been feeding them information on our whereabouts and the _only_ logical explanation is that it’s you!”

She is almost in my face at this point, not bothering to lower her voice or contain her rage. I feel my own anger pooling in my stomach at her words; I thought we had already established that I mean no harm but I wonder how long they intend to hold my origins over my head. My father’s blood is not my blood, and I feel I will need to answer for this until the end of my life.

Holding my hands up in surrender, I shake my head. “It’s not me. I swear to you on my life that I would never do that. My connections with the British have been severed for ages and I have no reason to sell you out when all you’ve done is give me a place to sleep and a decent life.”

“Swearing on your life doesn’t do me much when you’re undead,” Lake hisses, grabbing me by the front of my shirt. 

“That may be true but I have nothing else to swear on. I promise you I have nothing to do with this.”

Lake steps back, releasing me. “All we’ve had are problems since you two came aboard.”

“Don’t bring Victor into this,” I say without thinking, my voice rising. “He hates the British as much as I do. Maybe even more.”

“Well it has to be--”

The sound of a click beside her cuts Lake off as Victor emerges from his own chamber, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“What seems to be the problem?” he asks, straightening out his nightshirt.

I chance a glance at the bit of exposed flesh on his chest from where he hadn’t tied up his shirt properly. He catches my eye and I look away.

“One of you led the privateers to us and I want to know which one,” Lake snaps.

“Captain, that is a ridiculous accusation,” Victor replies, eyes darting between Lake and me. “Neither of us have any reason to do that. And do you really think the entirety of the British Navy would care enough about such a tiny and insignificant vessel as this one?”

“ _Hey!”_ Lake shouts. “How dare you!”

“Oh, come on. He’s right,” I say, rolling my eyes. “We have six people and a monkey aboard and when they looted us they didn’t even take anything because we literally have nothing of value. Sometimes privateers just camp out and wait for ships to show up. As a captain I would think you know that.”

Lake balls her fists at her sides, shaking. Victor and I exchange a glance.

“Please, captain, when I say that neither of us are responsible, especially not Benji, please believe us. I may no longer be a priest but I still obey God’s word, and I am not a liar. It very well may be a coincidence but if it is not, we will do anything in our power to help you find out who is responsible,” Victor reasons, placing a hand on my arm. The spot where he touches me feels warm. “But I trust Benji and I trust he is telling the truth, as well.”

Throwing her hands in the air in defeat, Lake lets out a loud groan. “Ugh, _fine._ But I’ve got my eyes on both of you. If I find out either of you are lying you’ll go straight to Davy Jones’s Locker, you hear me?”

Victor and I both nod vigorously before Lake stomps away and back to the now singed upper deck.

“What’s gotten into her?” I ask Victor after she is gone.

For a moment, he’s quiet, stroking the hair on his chin with an arm crossed over his chest as he stares at the wall. I watch him, not wanting to disturb him. But I can’t help but think about the way he’d embraced me on the beach, my heart clamoring fast and light at the back of my rib cage. He seems… different somehow. Perhaps he’s more like me than I had originally imagined.

“This whole situation is strange,” Victor finally says, turning to face me. “What if someone followed us from Tortuga? I know I said it was of little concern, but… Now I am not so certain. Perhaps you are more valuable than you thought.”

His gaze lingers on my face when he says this. I realize now that our bodies seem to have drifted together like a compass to the Northern pole to guide its journey. 

“I don’t want to think that it’s my fault all of us almost died,” I say, looking down at my hands as I turn them over to examine them properly.

“That is… not what I am saying at all,” he says, holding his hand up for a moment, eyes darting about before he gently places that hand on my shoulder. “And that is something else I wanted to ask you about. I have been thinking about what we experienced on the island; I am beginning to believe we have unleashed some sort of curse.”

“Maybe not so much a curse as it is something like… some sort of magic. I wonder if the others have experienced anything strange. I mean, aside from the whole maelstrom thing,” I say, as I reach into my pocket to withdraw one of the coins.

“Whatever it may be, I fear it is linked with those very coins,” Victor says, staring down at them. “When one of them dropped from your pocket last night, I could see the skeleton of the ship. The same way I saw your skeleton.”

Surely enough, the coin heats up in my hand, just as it had before. I hiss and put it away again.

“So this is what saved my life,” I say.

“Yes. I believe so. And it seems that they are made from Aztec gold, which can only mean one thing: this is the same curse that afflicted the _Black Pearl_ all those years ago. We must return all of the coins to Shipwreck Island. Which I realize is easier said than done.”

“But Victor… do you not know what this means?” I say, feeling a smile blooming on my lips. “Why should we give this up? Do you realize how much power this would give us?”

“Benji…” Victor says, placing his hands on my shoulders and staring directly into my eyes. “Please listen to yourself. This means you _cannot_ die. You cannot enjoy any earthly pleasures. You can simply watch as those you love grow old and die and leave you behind. Is that what you want?”

I shake my head to clear it. What on earth has gotten into me? I feel that part of me, the animalistic, primal part of me that became drunk on power as soon as I realized I could be invincible pull out its own sword to go to battle with the part of me that craves humanity and all that comes with it, flaws and lows and death and all. I swallow; I want to tell him that, no, I want to give it up. That power isn’t worth it. That I want to live an honest, quiet, normal life. That I didn’t feel something feral in my core when I stuck my sword into that man’s neck, watching his blood squirt out in spurts before he fell to the ground, dead by my hand. But I can’t.

When I look into his warm, deep brown eyes, I can see the light leave them for a moment when I say: “I don’t know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ooo... the mystery continues... I find Benji so interesting to write tbh, he's so complex. Now onto Vic's POV...


	14. Victor Salazar - 13 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Atlantic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew solve their problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You… truly do not have anyone you care for?” I ask him quietly, attempting to keep myself from sounding hopeful.
> 
> “So that’s the thing you latch onto?” he asks me, bristling, but not meeting my eyes. “I… misspoke.”
> 
> “Then tell me what you mean,” I say, hesitating before I rest my hand on his shoulder; this time he does not push me away.

We sit around the table in the kitchen, staring at our food. Jack the monkey scuttles about on the floor, tugging at our pant legs as if begging for scraps. I have no appetite nor any hunger; and it appears the others feel the same, aside from Felix, who shovels soup into his mouth, oblivious to the silence around him.

He looks up from his bowl, mid-chew, and slowly places his spoon and the piece of bread down on the table. 

“What’s going on? Tired of soup? I can make something else tomorrow,” he says, eyes roving to the faces of the crew. “It’s gonna get cold, mateys.”

“No, my love, it’s not that,” Andrew reassures him, rubbing soothing circles on his back. “I personally just… don’t feel like eating, but I don’t know about the rest. Maybe we’re just too tired to enjoy anything.”

The room fills with murmurs of agreement. I, however, want to test this hypothesis. So I stare at the soup, today’s being a hearty thick one with mince, potatoes, carrots and peas, a greyish-brown concoction that does not look particularly appetizing, and, knowing Felix’s cooking and our own access to ingredients, probably tastes equally as unpleasant as it looks. Wrinkling my nose ever so slightly, but not enough to be noticeable lest I harm Felix’s sensibilities, I take a bite. Jack screeches, banging his little fists on his chest.

Instantly, I choke. What I expect to be a spoonful of soup has become a dry, dusty pile of dirt in my mouth, and I spit it back into the bowl, coughing up black clouds from my lungs. I feel a hand patting me on the back as my eyes water. The contents of the bowl are no longer brown with pieces of yellow, green, and orange, but black. Black like coal. Soot. Night. Hell.

“Oh, it’s that bad, huh?” Felix says, eyes wide. “Dammit, I knew I should have put less coriander…”

“No, it’s not that,” Benji says from beside me. “Look. it’s all black. This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen, and I survived getting stabbed.”

Benji takes a bite of his soup, as well, and suffers the same fate as I, hacking up black dust as I take the liberty of patting his back in return. Mia, Lake and Andrew follow suit and a chorus of coughs and chokes and sputters fills the air. The other three look like dragons exhaling smoke from their mouths as they all begin to realize what has befallen us. Felix takes another bite of soup and bread, chews, and swallows normally. 

“Ugh this tastes like shit,” Lake says as she makes a face. 

“That’s really rude, you know,” Felix replies with a scoff. Jack crosses his arms and nods.

“You seem to be the only one who has not been affected by this,” I say, my gaze trained on Felix. “I believe I know what is afoot… Have you heard of the Curse of the _Black Pearl_?”

At that, the occupants of the table fall silent for a moment as they scrub their tongues of the acrid taste that resulted from the soup that had turned to ash in their mouths. 

“The curse of Hernan Cortes,” Mia says, wiping the side of her mouth in a kerchief. “Eight hundred and eighty-two identical pieces of Aztec gold… Oh no.”

“Yes. How many pieces of it did we take?” I ask.

Glancing down at her hands and pressing her mouth together into a thin line, Mia takes a shaky breath before she continues. “A hundred.”

“Wait…” Lake says, “what else does this curse do?”

“It makes you undead, and as we’ve seen here, also apparently turns food to ash, and probably makes it so you can’t enjoy _any_ earthly pleasures,” Benji says, staring at his bowl. He swallows. “I guess this is how I survived almost getting killed yesterday on the island.”

“And it also damns your soul for all eternity,” I say, the words echoing like the fire of a cannon before it collides with the side of a ship.

A hush falls over us. Benji’s eyebrows furrow together as he glances at me from the corner of his eye. I wonder if he still thinks this is all worth it. And for what? For power? Yet I also wonder if his delusions of grandeur, of the magic of a life of piracy and idealized notions of what could be a life of adventure on the seas are all worth it. I am already damned; I do not wish to spend my days denying myself pleasure any longer. The world is cruel enough, what use is there to make it crueler?

“All right, I will admit that it sounds brilliant to be invincible but also… I’m not sold on the eternal damnation and no longer being able to enjoy food part,” Lake says. “But how do you know all this, Victor?”

I shrug and say: “In San Juan, where I grew up, they would always tell us stories of what the pirates did as an attempt to scare us onto the path of righteousness… Although, I am beginning to realize that their ideas of righteousness are different than mine.”

“Amen to that,” Lake says with a click of her tongue.

“Enough with the idle chatter. Everyone, count your coins,” Mia orders, opening her satchel and withdrawing the coins she had hidden away. “We need all one hundred, and we need to return them to Shipwreck Island with a blood debt paid.”

“How are we supposed to get back there? I thought the maelstrom was going to swallow the island. Shipwreck City will be long gone by the time we get back,” Andrew says. 

“I don’t like the sound of ‘blood debt’,” Lake says.

“Relax, it’s just a little bit of blood. Like, a few squirts from your hand, it’ll be fine,” Mia says with a wave of her hand. “I’ve got thirty here.”

“Me, too,” Lake says, throwing her coins into the pile at the center of the table.

“Twenty from me,” Andrew says, following suit.

“You only gave Victor and I ten each,” Benji says, raising an eyebrow as he counts his coins, hand shaking and lip quivering. “Wait… I only have nine.”

I place my ten pieces of coin into the center of the table as everyone turns their gaze to Benji as if they would like nothing more than to shred his limbs from his body and roast him for supper despite not being able to eat food. 

“I told you we shouldn’t have trusted him,” Lake says in a sing-song voice to Mia.

“My love, enough of that. It has to be somewhere on this ship. I’m not letting anyone off this ship until that coin is found,” Mia says in response.

“Quick question… if I touch the coin, do I become a zombie, too?” Felix asks, tapping his finger on his chin.

“Yes,” Mia says.

“All right… another question. Can Jack also become a zombie?”

Mia looks at me with a raised eyebrow. I shrug and say: “I believe any sentient being can be affected by the curse.”

“How curious…” Felix says, taking Jack onto his shoulder before turning to speak to him. “Aww, no buddy, I can’t let your soul be damned for all eternity, that would be too mean…”

I rise from my seat, turning to leave with the others before I catch sight of Benji in his chair with his head balancing between his hands over his bowl of soup as he clutches at his hair. Frowning, I touch his arm. He shoves me away. Then he glances over his shoulder. We are alone.

“Why didn’t you tell me before?” He hisses at me, smacking my arm. “About the whole eternal damnation thing?”

“Truthfully, I forgot,” I say, sitting back beside him and turning to face him. “But you seemed very captivated by this curse only moments ago. I was shocked you would even consider keeping it in the first place.”

“That was before I knew what the true cost was, obviously! I don’t have anyone I care for who I would be sad over their dying, so what difference does it make for me if I outlive everyone I know? And I can live without food or drink or sex… well that last one might be a bit harder, but… Now that you’ve dropped the bomb that the price is so steep… Victor, _I don’t know_ where that coin went, and I don’t want to be responsible for _all_ of us being damned.”

I look down at my hands, swallowing the lump forming in my throat. Being responsible for the life of someone else is something I know too well. The weight, like a mountain anchoring one’s soul to the earth, cannot be easily displaced or removed. But Benji saying he does not have anyone he cares for barraged me in the chest, a jolt of lightning igniting in me the knowledge that my prayers had led me down the path to nothingness. 

“You… truly do not have anyone you care for?” I ask him quietly, attempting to keep myself from sounding hopeful.

“So _that’s_ the thing you latch onto?” he asks me, bristling, but not meeting my eyes. “I… misspoke.”

“Then tell me what you mean,” I say, hesitating before I rest my hand on his shoulder; this time he does not push me away.

Benji turns to face me properly. He reaches out a hand, pauses, then places it on my arm. The simple action sets my heart alight; as much as I would like to pull away, my desire to allow it outweighs the shame of our intimacy. 

“There is one person I care for… and even if he-- you don’t feel the same, I don’t want to keep it to myself,” Benji says quietly, eyes resting on where our bodies connect. “At first I thought perhaps it was simply me wanting to repay my debt to you for saving my life, but… when you embraced me on the beach, I realized you’re of great importance to me, Victor.”

I press my lips together, attempting to suppress the unconscious movement of my facial muscles into a smile. 

“I also care for you,” I say before I can think about it any further. “Thank you for telling me.”

He sighs, shoulders sagging, relieved, as he covers his eyes in his hand, a small smile drawing itself upon his lips, as well.

“Then even if we don’t break this curse, I suppose we’ll still have each other,” he says.

“Aye,” I say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's the end of this update... so, what did you think of that? Things are definitely getting more tense... The stakes are getting higher... I'm curious to hear what ya'll think of these chapters! And remember, 1 comment = 1 Venji living a good life on the high seas together!! See you next update!


	15. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 14 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Atlantic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to give a quick update to those of you who may be wondering why the rating is now mature: I am a few chapters ahead and upon reflection, I realized I can't justify a teen rating because things have already been quite spicy and they get even more so, and thus I can't in good conscience retain that lower rating. You'll see why somewhat in this chapter and beyond lol. Anyway I hope that doesn't deter you from reading and enjoy!
> 
> The crew find a body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Wonderful,” Victor says, standing farther back now. “We should probably tell the captains, no? Unless they have been transporting a dead man knowingly all this time.”
> 
> “They can’t have known,” Felix replies, shaking his head, “it’s not possible… None of us even knew this door was here.”
> 
> “Are you sure?” I ask.

I watch as Felix chases after Jack across the main deck right before the burnt and hollowed-out quarterdeck in the back of the ship, finally catching up to him and picking him up as he screeches to be put down.

He offers the monkey a coin, saying: “All right, buddy. We’re looking for something that looks like this. Can you find it?”

Raising an eyebrow and feeling my face twist into a smirk, I shake my head before returning to my task of finding the missing coin. I attempt to retrace my steps, observing for a moment as Jack chews on the coin, his little body flashing its skeleton for a split second before returning to normal. 

“Can he really find things like that?” I ask Felix as we both follow the chaotic sprinting of the monkey before us. “He just… looks like he wants to chew on it.”

“Oh, yeah. He just needs to memorize what it feels like. It’s all part of the process,” Felix replies, holding his hands up in resignation. “Can’t argue with genius.”

“Ah, I see. Well, good luck,” is all I can say, as I clap him on the back and return to the lower deck.

Sighing, I return to my quarters, searching under my feet for any sign of gold, but my search is unsuccessful. I had been essentially everywhere on the ship, and I am beginning to realize that this treasure hunt is going to be harder than I thought. What’s even worse is that if the captains are serious, it’s possible we will be out at sea for an unbearable amount of time. I glance out my window into the vast, open expanse of water and cringe.

With a sea shanty brimming in my ears, I hum along as I go through drawers, pillows and pockets in my room, once again coming up empty handed. I hope Lake doesn’t get any ideas in her mind about me attempting to sabotage everyone again, because her accusations are beginning to tire me.

Flopping down on my bed and allowing my arm to hang off the side as I stare at the wooden ceiling, I attempt to stave off my sensation that has my pulse racing and my mind on the edge of panic, teetering over the abyss that threatens to consume me if I take a thought-step further. I find my mind drifting to something peaceful, like the sound of the wind rustling through the leaves of the trees hundreds if not thousands of miles away on land, and the soft lapping of the waves tumbling over the sand on the shore, until my thoughts drift once again to Victor, and my heart speeds up yet again but for different reasons this time.

I hadn’t expected my confession to go as well as it had, nor had I expected Victor to push me in such a way that I would be forced to tell him how I feel, albeit in vague terms. But I’m thankful for it. The image of his smile, glowing and warm like the sand on the beach under the Caribbean sun, like the heat-soaked water in the harbor at Port Royal, and like the torches casting their light in the shadows along the path in Tortuga. It had been as if he had been waiting for me to say those words.

Perhaps the reason he had been so quick to concede was because when I told him I care for him, he believed it to be the same way one friend cares for another. For someone like him, existing in the world without his family but not by choice, I can imagine that having a friend would reduce that loneliness he feels, to serve as a lighthouse overlooking the sea at night to guide his ship to shore. But what I desire from him isn’t comradeship or companionship. It isn’t enough. 

While I have yet to repay Victor for my life, I wonder if I will ever get a chance to do so fully. I feel as if the scale is always tipped to the other side and no amount of action will move it to the other side of absolution. My affection for him is genuine, however; he is the only man I’ve ever known who hasn’t wanted to swindle me or use me once he found out who my father is. Perhaps the bar is too low, in that case. 

But I can see him allowing me into the recesses of his mind more, so that I, too, can traverse the labyrinth within beside him, even the thought of him holding my hand as he guides me causing my gut to erupt into a fit of butterflies. It had been so much easier when I hadn’t gotten attached. Yet I wouldn’t have it any other way. 

When I remember the men I’d bedded in Port Royal, whose names I  _ hadn’t  _ committed to memory, I realize that none of them had made me feel the way Victor does, despite his misgivings. I hadn’t wanted to  _ know  _ them in the way I want to know Victor. And I had never felt reciprocated care in the way I feel it from Victor. Even if he simply views me as a comrade. I suppose I will need to make do with friendship, because despite his refusal to judge me, I wonder if it’s simply fantasy, a backlit projection upon the sky showing me the image of Victor holding me to his strong chest and telling me that he loves me. No one else had been deserving of my devotion.

I swallow bitterly. We’ve known each other for only a few days. And as far as I know, Victor isn’t… like me. At least, the sentiment has not fallen from his lips. Sometimes I catch myself staring at the scar on his hand from where the shards of glass had turned him into a pincushion. And I wonder, for what?

Sighing, I sit back up. He doesn’t make any sense. All I know is that I trust him more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. But right now I want nothing more than for him to put me in my place again, because seeing him standing over me, sword in hand, has been making me weak for the past few days and I don’t know much longer I can stomach it before I begin to go mad.

With a final pat-down of my chamber that leaves me empty-handed once more, I exit out into the corridor again, only to see Victor laughing at something Felix had just said a moment before, while Jack overturns buckets in an attempt to find the missing coin like some sort of gold-sniffing bloodhound. He chirps as he returns to Felix’s side and tugs at the leg of his trousers, pointing toward what looked like a small door built into the side of the stairs that had been covered by several objects, effectively blocking it. 

“What is it, buddy? You want to go in there? I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Felix says in a high, sing-songy voice before nonetheless obliging the creature and opening the door.

Victor glances toward me and I swallow the lump in my throat, licking my lips as I turn my gaze to Felix.

“Oh,  _ Jesus Christ _ , what  _ is _ that?!” Felix all but shouts, leaping backward from the door and letting it swing open. 

Inside the tiny closet under the stairs is a long, shriveled figure hanging from a noose and rocking with the movement of the ship. Despite its raisin-like appearance, I can see the faint outline of what looks like a face adorned with a beard made of spindly, long bunches of dark brown hair radiating outward. Whoever this is must have been a fearsome pirate in their day, the face weathered and scarred, the jacket torn yet of high quality and accessorized with quite a bit of leather pieces. At their sides hung what looked like a giant crab claw attached to one arm and to another, a tentacle.

The three of us peer at it from a distance, holding our breaths as we expect it to start moving despite every indicator telling us that no, whoever this is has gone to the other realm already. Victor looks green and makes a face, shuddering, as he runs across the corridor to one of the round windows, shoves it open, and heaves into the sea. Felix, however, remains rooted in place as if he had become one with the ship, legs and torso and arms and head and all -- petrified and splintery and ready to be cut down. 

“Can I have a look?” I say, resting a hand on Felix’s shoulder as I gently move him aside so I can get closer to the ghastly looking thing.

Returning as he wipes his mouth in his sleeve, Victor keeps his distance. I glance to him and see him watching me with his arms crossed over his chest; my face heats up, and I shove some of my hair behind my ear, biting my lip as I approach the figure, my heart suddenly speeding up; I don’t know if it’s because I’m looking at a dead body, or because I can feel Victor’s eyes boring into me, hard and deep. There’s something else of Victor’s I would  _ much  _ rather have boring into me but that’s a conversation for another time.

Clearing my throat, I examine the figure as it dangles like a currant from a branch on its small bush, my eyebrows furrowing together as I turn away and reach out my hand to touch it; upon making contact, I can feel the dryness of meat preserved in salt, the smell of flesh barely noticeable. 

“Benji… what on earth are you doing?” Victor asks from beside me, his voice hoarse and shaky.

“I’m… trying to figure out how long it’s been dead,” I say, shuddering at the sensation.

“Why… not again--” Victor sputters, running back to the window.

When I raise my gaze to the dangling body again, I see that the beard is actually also made of leathery tissue, and I poke at what look like… tentacles? And they attach to the figure’s face as if he had an octopus placed upon his neck where his skull should be. Very curious indeed… I’ve never seen anything like this before.

“Looks like some sort of… half-octopus, half-man hybrid,” I announce as I step away and turn back round to Victor and Felix, placing my hands on my hips proudly. “And it’s definitely been dead for a long time.”

“Wonderful,” Victor says, standing farther back now. “We should probably tell the captains, no? Unless they have been transporting a dead man knowingly all this time.”

“They can’t have known,” Felix replies, shaking his head, “it’s not possible… None of us even knew this door was here.”

“Are you sure?” I ask.

At that very moment, Jack begins to scream as he leaps at the hanging man, teeth bared and fingers ready to tear into him as he launches himself directly at the figure’s chest.

He rips apart the fabric of the clothes to reveal a gaping chasm where a heart should be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What did you think of the new development? Spooky right? Now onto Victor's POV, where things start to get even more wild...


	16. Victor Salazar - 14 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Atlantic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor plays doctor to Benji.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Benji swallows, dabbing at his eye with a knuckle. “Do you think I’m a bad person? Because I can handle killing?”
> 
> As I turn my gaze to his face, I resist the urge to wipe his tears. With a soft exhale, I pull out my kerchief and wipe them anyway before I say: “No.”

My stomach continues its war with me as I watch the hanging figure from afar, its leathery skin reminding me of the rotten meat we would keep in the monastery that even the dogs would not eat. I wonder if I will even become accustomed to death. It surrounds me at every turn, and it would do me well to behave in a manner more fitting of a man.

The captains arrive in the lower deck accompanied by Felix and Andrew, looking scandalized that something could interrupt their very important time together. Even though they, in a similar fashion to the rest of us, should be in the process of searching for the final coin, Lake and Mia rationalized that they still need an afternoon date because they had not had one in “many moons.” 

“What is it?” Lake asks as she finishes buttoning up her blouse and rubs one of the welts that had appeared on her neck; it disappears before our eyes. She does not fuss herself with covering it with her hair.

“We have a little bit of a… situation,” Felix says with a grimace as he motions toward the open door. “Did you two know we were ferrying around a dead man? Er… whatever this is?”

As Mia tucks her wrinkled blouse into her trousers, she approaches. When she peers inside, she recoils at once. 

“How did you find this… _thing?_ ” Mia says with a shudder, shielding her face. “I didn’t even know there was a door here.”

“Don’t you think it’s a bit careless to not know the layout of your own ship? For all we know we could have a _load_ of other people just hiding in parts of the ship we don’t even know exist,” Andrew says, crossing his arms over his chest as he chances a quick glance at the hanging body. “But this guy looks… unwell.”

Mia takes another step toward the corpse, a bit closer this time, squinting as she examines it and attempts to keep herself from looking away this time. As soon as she does, the pendant round her neck begins to glow red and, as if acting on its own, ascends above her head, ripping itself off the tie it had been attached to, and jolts directly into the body.

Raising an eyebrow, I approach, steeling my innards so I do not vomit for a third time. If these two women may stomach such a sight, so may I. 

Tilting my head to the side as I come closer, I see the red glowing object planted in the pit where the figure’s heart should be, like the final missing piece of a puzzle. 

“I promise you all… We had no idea that this cupboard was here, nor that there was a dead body but… Perhaps it’s true we should check the ship more thoroughly just in case,” Mia says, her voice shaking; I am inclined to believe her. “And I don’t know why my Calypso’s mark is doing this but… there’s no doubt there’s a connection between… Wait a second…”

“You don’t think that could be…” Benji mutters, stepping beside Mia. 

“Davy Jones,” I say.

As soon as the words leave my throat, the half-man, half-beast’s eyes erupt like burning coals in their sockets and it begins to shake. I leap back and can only watch as Benji darts forward, yanking the coin out of the spot where it had stuck in the hole where its heart should be. He struggles for a moment but ultimately succeeds, clutching it tightly in his hand as the figure’s eyes darken once again and its movements cease.

Andrew and Lake draw their swords, pointing them at the figure. I find myself coaxing my heart into a slower pace as I step beside Benji as he hisses in pain. Glancing down, I watch as Benji massages his palm where the coin had branded its mark into his flesh, leaving behind the smell of roasting meat to waft through the air.

“We can’t have this thing on the ship,” Lake says as she brandishes her sword. “Who knows what it’s capable of.”

“If it really is Davy Jones’ body then we can’t just get rid of it,” Mia warns, stepping between the cupboard and her wife. “I think… that pendant I have might be his heart. You know, the one he got cut out when he became immortal. If we give it back to him he’ll probably come back to life but if I hold onto it, we should be fine.”

“But we still don’t know how it got here,” Benji says, handing the coin back to Mia. “If you’re being truthful, we have three options. Either one of us brought the body aboard, which is unlikely, someone _else_ brought it aboard or…” He hesitates, as if he would not believe the words himself if he utters them aloud.

“Or he appeared on the ship via some sort of witchcraft,” I say solemnly. “Given what I have seen, that may be the most likely option.”

Mia ties the coin back around her neck and presses the rest of us away from the cupboard. “For now, let’s close this and keep it locked and blocked by whatever was here before. And we’ll take turns watching it to make sure it doesn’t… wake up. I’ll keep the coin as far away from it as possible. Benji, you’re up first on guard duty.”

“Aye, aye, captain,” Benji says with a salute, but he sighs nonetheless. He continues to stare down at the red mark on his hand. 

“Everyone else, let’s keep looking for the last piece of Aztec gold, savvy?” Mia says, shutting the door and barring it. “And move those crates over to block the door.”

Mia and Lake return to the upper deck muttering amongst each other, while the rest of us move the crates to cover the door as ordered. It now appears as if there had been nothing there at all, only a wall covered by crates and nothing more. Felix grasps Jack by his tiny chest and hoists him back onto his shoulder as he continues on his search for the missing gold piece. Andrew follows after him, clamping him on the shoulders with both hands.

Now Benji and I are alone.

“I feel like I’m being punished,” he says as he sits down on one of the overturned buckets, leaning back against one of the crates and crossing his arms over his chest. “For losing the coin, I mean.”

“Hmm… perhaps you are right,” I say, sitting on a bucket beside him but leaving a bit of distance between us. “But I know it is not your fault, if that counts for anything.”

“Thanks,” he says with a grimace, glancing down at his hand again. “Sometimes I feel like no matter what I do, they won’t trust me.”

Without thinking, I brush a stray lock of hair from Benji’s face and tuck it behind his ear. “That sounds frustrating. I believe they may think similarly about me but not to the same extent. But I hope you know that _I_ trust you.”

Benji sighs, red tinging his cheeks as he rests his hand face up on his knee. “That’s actually… really good to know. Because I trust you, too. A lot. And I can live with the others not trusting me so long as you still do.”

I bite my lip in an attempt to suppress my smile, my hands becoming wet with perspiration. Clapping them against my knees, I rise. “Allow me to take care of you again. Do not go anywhere.”

As I leave, I hear Benji chuckle to himself, and I cannot stop myself from doing so, too. I retreat into the empty kitchen, searching about and wondering what sort of logic Felix used to organize it because it simply does not make any sense. Dried fruit and cured meats together, root vegetables next to flour next to tea. 

Shaking my head, I come across what looks like sugar, molasses, and honey altogether (that makes sense for once) and I turn around to search for a cup -- next to the oven stacked up in a tower, _obviously_ \-- and spoon some honey into it. I then reach into the now cold oven and pull out a handful of charcoal. Finally, I throw it into the mortar, grind it into a fine powder, and then mix it with the honey into an inky black salve. After cleaning up after myself, I leave the kitchen as I had found it, although if it were up to me I would have organized it a bit more logically.

While I walk back to the room under the stairs, I stir the mixture so that it homogenizes, and I sit back down on the bucket beside Benji. 

“What do you have there?” he asks me, peering into the cup of black sludge that smells faintly of hibiscus.

“A salve made of honey and charcoal to encourage healing and prevent infection,” I say. “May I?”

He nods and holds out his hand, palm up, and I place my own palm under it to support it as I examine it. Not only was the palm burned beyond repair, but so were the middle of some of his fingers. I sigh and pass the cup of salve to Benji to hold while I scoop it into his hand and smear it on all the red, raised skin. He wrinkles his nose at the sticky sensation.

“This should not have happened,” I say. “With the curse we have set upon us, there should not be a wound left behind.”

“Hmm… you’re right,” Benji replies, sounding thoughtful. “I wonder if it has to do with the fact that Calypso’s mark is also… magical. Perhaps it overpowers the curse?”

“Perhaps…” I say, glancing at Benji from the corner of my eye. A change of subject is in order. “You were very brave today. It seems that you are at ease with… death and killing.”

Withdrawing his hand, Benji looks away before he speaks. “Only when I have to be.”

“I do not wish to make it seem that I am judging you, Benji,” I say as gently as I can muster. “It is simply… an observation.”

Benji swallows, dabbing at his eye with a knuckle. “Do you think I’m a bad person? Because I can handle killing?”

As I turn my gaze to his face, I resist the urge to wipe his tears. With a soft exhale, I pull out my kerchief and wipe them anyway before I say: “No.”

“This is so embarrassing,” he says with a mirthless chuckle. 

“I am truly amazed at you, though,” I say, patting him on the leg. “The fact that you were so… calm in the presence of a body both concerned me and made me a bit envious.”

He studies me for a moment. “I mean, you get used to it after you’ve seen a couple of dead guys. But I don’t think it’s… enviable.”

“You and I have most likely seen similar amounts,” I say with a small smile tugging at my lips. “I feel silly that my first instinct is to run away and be ill.”

“That’s the appropriate response. It’s not good to be desensitized; that just means you still have your humanity.”

“So do you. We may be afflicted by this curse but we are not any less human than we were a few days ago. At least, not psychologically.”

Glaring down at his hands, Benji grits his teeth, and I see his jaw tense. “I don’t want to be a killer.”

Pressing my lips together, I swallow, feeling the pinpricks of tears at my eyes as well. “Me neither. I suppose I… assumed you were coping with this better than you let on.”

All he can do is shake his head, his body wracked with shudders, like our ship as it makes is way across the middle of the ocean, like a coconut tree releasing its treasure to the earth, like a miner sifting for gold in a river -- and he comes undone, the tears cascading down his face in a way that would put a waterfall to shame. 

I pull him to my chest and bury my face in his hair so he does not see the tears that plummet from my eyes as well. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all for today's updates! Hope you enjoyed the development of the story. Your feedback is great motivation for me to keep writing this story and finishing it up before the end of the month for NaNo. And as always, 1 comment = 1 Venji have a fun pirate life! See you in the next update!


	17. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 17 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Caribbean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benji and Victor count to a hundred.
> 
> (Things are about to get spicier up in here... as you may have seen I've changed the rating to M and included some more tags just to give you all an idea of where this is going to go... enjoy...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once I get to the crow’s nest, Jack chirps as his eyes dart around; he must know he has nowhere to go, his tiny body backed into the corner that is the sky and nothing else. 
> 
> “Hand it over,” I say, holding out my hand.

I find that with each passing day, I become more irrevocably enamored with Victor Salazar. The way he speaks to me as if raising his voice a certain point would cause me to break, the way he lets his gaze linger upon my form when he believes I don’t notice, the way I can entrust him with the fears I hold under lock and key, allowing him into my inner sanctum with the knowledge that he will hold my secrets but will not cast judgment upon them. 

So as I watch Victor chase after the little monkey as he waves the two gold coins around in the air, clasped tightly in his tiny fists, I can feel the warmth stirring within me even though I know it shouldn’t be.

“Hey, where did you get that?!” Victor asks Jack as if he expects an answer. “We have been looking all over for that piece. Please give it to me.”

The little creature makes a screeching sound that could be a laugh as he does a little jig, clapping the coins together in a way that sounds like a bell. I approach, my lip curling.

“Need any help there, Victor?” I ask, quirking an eyebrow. “I don’t think you’re gonna get an answer from him no matter how hard you try. Reasoning with Jack seems… ineffective.”

“Very funny,” Victor muses, side-stepping as Jack attempts to sneak past him. “I think I can handle a monkey.”

Jack fakes him out and jumps onto the rope ladder leading up to the mast, climbing quickly so that he’s just a bit out of Victor’s reach. I see Victor close his eyes and sigh as he covers his face in his hands. He approaches the ladder, staring up at it as if contemplating the deepest secrets of the universe.

“Well? Aren’t you going to go after him?” I say, watching as Jack ascends higher and higher, closing the gap between him and god with each passing second.

“I will go… in a moment,” Victor says, clutching at the rope so hard his knuckles look like they want to split open and leap from beneath his flesh.

He swallows as he stares up at Jack, one foot on the first rung of the ladder, but the other planted firmly on the deck of the ship. I can see that he has no plans to go anywhere. 

“You’re afraid of heights,” I say, shrugging off my jacket and shoving it into Victor’s chest. “Let me handle this.”

“Wait, Benji, your hand--” he calls after me as I climb, and I roll my eyes.

“Don’t worry about it,” I say as I peer down at him. “It doesn’t hurt that much anymore, thanks to you.”

“And I am _not_ afraid of heights. I just… knew it would be a waste to climb when he would already be so far ahead of me,” Victor says from below.

“Sure,” I say.

Humming, I go arm-leg, arm-leg up the mast, keeping my gaze training on that little monkey bastard’s tail as it flicks about. He pauses, sitting and staring down at me with his little head tilted to the side, innocent. 

_You surely understand more than you let on_ , I think to myself, smirking. The cool wind hits my teeth as I speed up my movements. 

Just as I approach him, he leaps up again toward the crow’s nest, leaving me grasping at air and I waver, almost losing my grip. The adrenaline that boils through my veins with that single action is enough to almost light me on fire, but I need to keep going. Gritting my teeth, I continue my ascent, my fingers gripping at the rope even tighter than before. 

Once I get to the crow’s nest, Jack chirps as his eyes dart around; he must know he has nowhere to go, his tiny body backed into the corner that is the sky and nothing else. 

“Hand it over,” I say, holding out my hand.

Jack lets out one short screech before holding out the coins. When I go to grab them, he pulls them away. 

“Goddammit… You’re such a twat,” I growl, swatting my hand toward him again fruitlessly. 

I heave a sigh before I reach out and grasp Jack by the back of his little jacket, holding him away from me as he thrashes about, kicking and flailing and wanting to bury his pointed teeth into my arms. My descent proves slow, but at least I know there is no chance of Jack escaping. 

Eventually he stops his violent protest, becoming limp in my arms as I near the halfway point. I glance down and see Victor watching me, arms crossed over his chest. Only a little bit more to go… 

At that moment, as Jack looks down, too, he lets out another high-pitched scream and this one is so piercing and violent that it feels as if he had plunged a sword into my neck and was dragging it down, slicing me open to the belly. I want to clap my hands over my ears, but I know I cannot. And just as his screeching began, so, too, do his thrashes, and these ones seem even more indignant than the ones before.

Despite my efforts to retain my balance, I can feel my grip on the rope loosening, and my feet slipping farther and farther off the surface, until the ground beneath me cuts out. I tumble to the deck of the ship, my breath hitching in my throat. All I can do is brace for impact. My heart clamors against my rib cage, an arm threatening to punch a hole through me just so it can grab ahold of something, _anything_ to stop my body from crashing to the ground.

Clutching Jack to my chest as we freefall, my mind goes blank. 

And a moment later, I come to, my back colliding with a surface significantly softer than I expected it to be. My eyes, which had closed tightly with the expectation of imminent death, snap open as I take a deep breath. 

“Are you all right?” a voice says, sounding far away and muffled in my ears, as if I were under water in that moment.

Victor’s face peers down at me, his eyes wide and warm, eyebrows pressed together like a bridge between both hemispheres of his face. All I can do is raise the hand that isn’t clutching Jack to Victor’s cheek, and I wipe the stray tear that had escaped his lower lid with my thumb. And as has happened hundreds of times before, my own gaze slips down to Victor’s lips. I could kiss him. But I don’t want to push him away. 

How many times will he have to save me?

“Benji… are you all right?” Victor asks again, pleading, and this time, he sounds like he is as close as he’s supposed to be.

“Yeah, yeah… I’m… fine.” I say, my voice hoarse from the dryness of my throat. “Thank you for… catching me.”

“No problem... “

He sets me down on my feet, and I lean on him for balance, shaking my head to clear it. Jack still thrashes about in my hand.

“I see why you’re afraid of heights now,” I say with a weak chuckle, as I wrestle the remaining coins from Jack’s paws before depositing him back on the deck. “But anyway… we have the coins. I think that’s all of them.”

“Should we get the captains?” Victor asks, his hand still resting on my lower back as if he thinks I’ll plummet to the ground if he isn’t there to hold me up. 

“Aye.”

“And don’t worry, I’ll let you take some of the credit because you saved me from becoming a crepe.”

We make our way to the captain’s quarters, and in my post-adrenaline haze I can feel Victor’s presence closer than it had been before. His arm is still on my back, and I wonder if he is aware of this fact at all, or if his body has instinctively gravitated toward me, as he naturally guides me from behind like the wheel of a ship directing the position of the mast in order to gain the most efficient flow of air. I cannot say I mind it at all. With that action alone, I feel protected.

When we arrive before the door to their quarters, I knock thrice.

“Who is it?” Lake says from the other side.

“Benji,” I say as I turn to Victor beside me. “Victor and I may have found the missing coin but we’ll need to count the remainder to be sure.”

A click indicates that the door is unlocked, and Lake appears in the doorway with her blouse unbuttoned. She passes them the jingling bag of coins to them through the crack between the door and the wall before closing it and locking it again.

“Don’t come back unless there’s a hundred in there,” she says, her voice growing softer as she retreats.

Victor and I take the bag with us and descend into the lower deck.

“Where do you want to do this?” I ask, fidgeting with the string on the bag.

“I would say the kitchen, but… that little rascal can pop in any time and cause us more trouble so perhaps one of our rooms would be best,” Victor suggests.

Nodding, I lead us into my chamber, plopping down atop it and patting the space beside me to indicate that Victor should sit, too. His mouth scrunches to the side for a moment before he complies, and he leaves a gap between us so we can count the coins.

Humming, I dump the contents of the bag carefully onto the bed, ensuring nothing would pour out onto the floor with the violent rocking of the ship. Victor peeks out through the window, and I follow his gaze for a moment to the black clouds that had gathered above us, threatening us with a storm. 

Victor returns his gaze to me as I add the two coins from my pocket to the pile on the bed and segregate them into piles of ten. I pass each pile to Victor and we count. One, two, three, four...

One hundred.

We do the same thing once more.

A hundred again.

Finally, just to be _very_ sure, I count each one individually, passing the coins over one by one to Victor for verification.

One hundred gold coins, ready to break our curse.

I count them one final time as I load them back into the bag and tie it tightly, and exhale relief. Setting the bag of coins aside, I drop myself onto my back with my hands over my head, my nails knocking against the wooden wall. But I don’t care.

With a smile, I turn my head to Victor, who is somehow even closer than I remember, his fingertips all but touching my waist as he gazes down at me. If he wanted to, he could lean down and kiss me. Or I could reach up and take his face in my palm again, and bring him down to press his lips to mine. 

But instead, I simply watch him, the silence between us almost unbearable, before I break eye contact again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, thanks for tuning into the next installment of this story. As you may have seen in the chapter summary, things are gonna get spicy soon so I wanted to warn you and also to ensure you check the tags so you know what you're in for. This is not a kid-friendly story lol. Anyway, onto the next chapter! Where things really heat up from Vic's POV...


	18. Victor Salazar - 23 May, 1787; Isla Cruces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor and Benji get even closer together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feeling a bit self conscious, I observe Benji beside me as he begins to remove his clothes as well, and I gasp, holding up my hand to shield him from view, my face burning as if I had placed it directly into a furnace only a moment before. 
> 
> “Warn me next time!” I say, turning away from him. I leave a tiny slit between my third and fourth fingers unconsciously, my eyes gravitating to his small but chiseled torso. 

The  _ Rainbow Horizon  _ docks at Isla Cruces, the Island of Crosses, in the early afternoon, the open sky casting its light like a blessing upon us, a good omen wishing us safe passage. From the upper deck I can see the thin tree cover between the beach and the inner part of the island inhabited by what looks like a ruined church on a hill, its bricks toppled into a heap, its sides thick and soft with vines and moss crawling up them, and a brass bell like an eye glinting at us in the light from where it sits perched within the church’s collapsed face.

I sigh, strapping my sword to my hip before throwing my change of clothes over my shoulder, and proceed to the upper deck to join the rest of the crew. We traipse across the bridge to the dock, which creaks with age. The air is quiet save for the wind and waves and the songs of tropical birds. 

“Are we sure it’s a good idea to just leave Davy Jones unattended?” Benji asks as we disembark.

“I think we’ve established that so long as Calypso’s mark stays far away from him, he won’t go anywhere,” Mia says with a wave of her hand.

Benji opens his mouth to retort before closing it. Our only other option would be to physically take the corpse with us and I am not fond of that option at all. 

“There should be no one here to bother us,” Andrew announces as he moves to the head of the group, motioning with his hand for us to follow him. “This island has been abandoned for years. It used to be a Christian missionary village, hence the church, but everyone ended up falling ill with some sort of infectious disease and they all died. So… At least they left behind some wells and a grain store so we can pick up some food.”

“You sure it’s a good idea to eat the grain they left behind, my love?” Felix asks as he drapes an arm over Andrew’s shoulder, looking a bit comical due to their difference in height. “Maybe that’s what killed them all.”

“It definitely is a good idea because we’ve been eating it this whole time,” Andrew replies, wrapping an arm around Felix’s waist as they walk.

Lake and Mia burst out laughing at their exchange, and I cannot stop myself from cracking a smile, as well. We walk through the tree cover and begin our trek up the hill covered in long, cricket-infested grass toward the only freshwater lake around the area. I glance to my side to see Benji staring at the ground, seeming deep in thought, his face fixed in an unreadable expression as he chews on his lower lip. 

“Stop that,” I say, smacking Benji gently on the arm to garner his attention. “What is on your mind?”

Benji jumps a bit, startled, but ceases the excessive worrying of his lip in favor of turning his attention to me. With a small smile, he says: “I guess I’m still thinking about our conversation from the other day. And trying to… reconcile with my own actions. The killing. It’s taking a bit of time but I think I’m becoming more okay with it. Not in the sense of being happy about it but more so… in forgiving myself.”

Drifting a bit closer to him, I nod before I say: “That is good. I too have had a bit of a struggle with it and I fear the blood on my hands will never wash away, but all we can do is pray for forgiveness, although I am not so sure to which God I should pray anymore.”

“Perhaps this is another test of your faith,” he says, a twinkle in his eye. 

“That may be, or it could be confirmation that everything I believed in was a lie,” I say bitterly, kicking aside a rock on the ground. “At least, the big things. About there being one God. About the Bible being the one true Word. About… being who I am being sinful. Or perhaps there is in fact one true God, but her name is Calypso.”

Benji blinks, almost tripping over his own feet, his cheeks reddening. I feel my own heat up, as well. He swallows.

“Who are you, then, Victor Salazar?” Benji asks quietly, his lip curling up a bit and exposing his pointed canines. I cannot help but stare, mesmerized.

“That is what you latch onto?” I tease in response, earning an eye roll from Benji.

“Haha, very funny. But seriously. Who are you?”

“Well, I think that… I… you and I… and all of us on the ship… we are the same. We have the same… proclivities,” I say slowly, stumbling over my words. But Benji listens without saying a word of interruption. 

Pressing his lips together tightly, Benji covers his mouth in his hand. He emits a short, breathy chuckle, and I raise my eyebrow at him. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Benji says, knocking me in the arm with his shoulder. “I suppose I’m just a bit… surprised? But I’m happy you finally figured it out. I know it can be tiring.”

“Thank you,” I say, exhaling relief. “It feels good to tell someone else. Although I knew you would not judge me for it.”

“Of course. I’m sure the rest of the crew will want to hear, too.”

“I will tell them… later. You are my most trusted confidant, so I wanted you to be the first to know. But I wish I could tell Pilar, too. I would if she were here.”

With a crooked smile, Benji stares at the ground. Up ahead, the clear blue water sparkles at us from the lake, and the others are already in the process of stripping naked and running into the water, not taking any concerns for modesty as they toss their things on the bank.

Feeling a bit self conscious, I observe Benji beside me as he begins to remove his clothes as well, and I gasp, holding up my hand to shield him from view, my face burning as if I had placed it directly into a furnace only a moment before. 

“Warn me next time!” I say, turning away from him. I leave a tiny slit between my third and fourth fingers unconsciously, my eyes gravitating to his small but chiseled torso. 

“Oh, relax, don’t act like you’ve never seen a cock before,” Benji says before shuffling off across the ground and into the water.

In that moment, I realize my mistake. I should have done this quicker, so I could have been the first to enter the water and be able to do so without my manhood being scrutinized. Yet due to my hesitation, I would now be the last to arrive, and of course this means the eyes of the entirety of the crew will be on me. If it were not for the fact that I need to wash myself, I would simply wear my underclothes; but that is not an option; so I remove the last of my clothes, setting them aside, and march into the water, pretending that the action itself is not one of the most humiliating things I have ever experienced.

Once the water hits my skin and I submerge myself in it, I realize no one is paying me any mind, instead focused on sinking below the surface and scrubbing the sand from their hair. I do the same, closing my eyes as I splash a bit of the cool liquid in my face before falling back to wet my hair. The temperature is cold enough to raise goose flesh on my skin, but it is a welcome sensation that brings my temperature down from its unpleasant extreme. 

I clean myself quickly and look up just as Benji rises from the lake, his back and bare backside exposed to me, the light shining off the droplets that cascade from his body as he runs his fingers through his hair to remove it from his face, looking like Apollo as he prepares to ascend Mount Olympus. He turns his face to me over his shoulder, and for once, I remove my gaze too slowly. But he says nothing, standing, statuesque, for a moment longer before he exits the water.

My heart threatens to tear itself apart into chunks of tissue in humiliation as I throw myself into the weighty surface of the lake, screaming under the water before I emerge, panting. I wade across the lake to the bank, stepping onto the shore and back to where I had deposited my clothes, flicking my sopping hair from my face.

As I slip into a pair of clean underclothes, Benji turns to me, lowering his gaze for a moment before I see where his eyes had gone. He smirks as he raises his gaze to my pupils, his cheeks flushed. I toss my shirt at him, reddening for the thousandth time that day. 

Finally, I manage to dress myself in my trousers and boots, leaving my shirt off so the breeze can cool my skin. I tie my sword to my side. 

Andrew and Felix return down the hill toward the abandoned church, while Lake and Mia sit on the bank of the lake with their blouses off, as well, chatting amongst themselves. For the time, we are free to venture about the island until nightfall, when we will retreat to the abandoned inn to sleep. It feels strange to have the solid land beneath my feet after many days at sea, buckling and bracing against the movement of the waves.

When I glance up, I see that Benji had already begun his journey back down to the beach, sword bouncing against his leg, and I follow after him, sprinting to catch up.

“Benji!” I call in an attempt to garner his attention. “How about a duel?”

He rolls his eyes, face still in the same state it had been a few moments before. “You and your duels… Why not. But can you go easy on me this time?”

“I will think about it.”

We settle down on the beach between several coconut trees casting long, ominous shadows across the sand. I unsheathe my sword, watching as Benji does the same. A stray droplet falls from his hair onto his bare shoulder, and I am mesmerized by it until I see him approach me.

“Fine, I suppose I can give you a head start,” I say, as I dodge his side swipe.

Grunting, he pulls another side swipe, this one in the opposite direction. It catches on my shoulder but it does not bleed. I leap backward. We need more space between us. He seems faster than I remember. More certain.

Raising my cutlass before my face, I charge. He lunges, sword to my chest. I block and parry. He leaps back. I side swipe. He dodges. Side swipe again. Block. He twirls his sword. I follow it with my eyes. 

“Keep up,” he says, before he swipes again. I swallow as I watch the muscle in his arm ripple beneath his skin.

“Did you get better these last few days?”

“Maybe I have.”

This entire time, I have been playing on the defensive. I lay down a volley of side swipes in quick succession. He blocks and dodges every one. 

With a smirk, I rake my eyes down his bare torso, and he pauses for a moment, watching me. He can tell I am distracted. I have been since even before we started. And he is clever enough to use that against me. But I will not let him succeed.

Or so I think.

My back bumps against a surface.

He raises the side of his cutlass to my neck, pressing down. But no blood spills.

I can feel his breath against my chin as he looks up at me, eyebrows furrowed. He pushes up against me. Our chests, slick with sweat, rub against each other.

And he closes the gap between us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for today's update! Hope you enjoy these! And as I said, things are heating up, so don't expect it to be tame... Anyway, thanks for reading! And 1 comment = 1 Venji having a good time! See you next time!


	19. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 23 May, 1787; Isla Cruces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor and Benji discuss expectations. 
> 
> (From here on in, things get spicy... so buckle up.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Because I was dealing with a great deal of shame, it was difficult. But I am no longer ashamed,” he says, staring me directly in the face. “From the moment I saw you, I desired you. I simply could not accept that part of myself until now. Seeing you, so confident in yourself… And all our comrades, as well… It was only a matter of time before I realized that I cannot deny myself any longer.”
> 
> I rest my hands on the sides of his neck, our noses hovering a hair’s-length apart. “I desired you from the moment I first saw you, too,” I say.

My lips move against his feverishly, more indignant than they ever have been before; my weapon slides from my grip, plopping soundlessly into the sand. As always, I don’t know what to do when I have power.

What’s even more surprising is he kisses me back, clumsy but eager, as he clamps his hands round my waist and flips us around, pressing me flush against the smooth bark of the tree and encasing me with his body so I cannot slip away. But it matters not, for I don’t want to. 

He bites at my lower lip hungrily, trailing his hands from my waist and up my chest, making me shudder under his fingers, goose flesh following the path of his touch. I moan into his mouth, pressing my tongue against his lips as he devours me. My own hands find their way to his back, snaking around his strong, lean frame. But they don’t stay there for longer than a moment; he unlatches me from him and shoves my wrists against the tree, pinning me down. I only struggle for a moment, and it’s no real struggle. When he pulls away, kissing down my neck, I can feel my mind go hazy at the sensation, melting as he travels down to my chest with his lips. 

As my eyes flutter closed, I simply allow it. But part of me does think we should stop, cool it down, before we progress to the point we cannot return from. No, I _must_.

“Stop,” I say, my voice hoarse and quiet.

And as soon as the words leave my lips, he releases his hold on me. He steps back, giving me space. His cheeks are flushed and he heaves, eyes dark with lust as he looks at everything but me. I imagine I look equally as distressed as my arms drop to my sides.

“Why did you do that?” he asks.

“I saw the way you looked at me before. At the lake,” I reply, cupping his face and adjusting his gaze so that he would look into my eyes. “Now that I know you’re like me…”

“No, why did you stop me?” he says, our pupils connecting and causing my breath to hitch in my throat.

“Oh,” is all I can say. 

Now I feel more conscious of his eyes on me, staring into me like two pools of magma, the way he looked at me all those times when he thought I wasn’t paying attention with the meaning that I now understand. How foolish I was to doubt him. 

“It would be a lie to say I hadn’t thought about it,” I say, not divulging the fact that just a moment before our duel I had imagined what it would be like for him to take me while we were down at the lake, right in front of the rest of the crew. I clear my throat. “But I don’t think this is a good place nor is this a good time for that.”

“Fair enough,” he says.

“But I will say that for a man who’s been celibate for so long, you’re surprisingly… enthusiastic.”

“I imagine that is from the frustration,” Victor says with a grin. 

“Well, the technique can be improved but that’s the easiest part to correct. Perhaps we should practice some more. But let’s set some ground rules first,” I say, hyper aware of the tightness in my trousers as I press myself back against the tree and pull Victor toward me. 

“Good idea,” he says, brushing his damp curls from his face.

He peers down at me, squinting a bit because he’d taken off his spectacles. For now he doesn’t touch me, but the warmth in my stomach that pools when I rest my gaze on his hands as I take in the veins carved into them and their size makes me want nothing more than for him to squeeze them around me. I swallow, my eyes fluttering closed. 

“I’m fine with anything above the belt, for now,” I say.

“Anything?” 

“Anything you want. And you can even leave marks if you want,” I say, peeking through a crack in my one eye. “I trust you.”

“I suppose I should say the same for myself, whatever that entails, just… no marks. Because I trust you, as well. Although I suppose with the curse we have on us there will be no marks anyway,” he says after a moment. “But that way I can learn from you regardless.”

“True… Anyway, just tell me if you don’t like something. I won’t make fun of you,” I reassure him, opening my eyes and cupping his face in my hands as I look up at him. “And obviously tell me to stop and I will.”

“I know.”

“So… will you lead?”

“Of course,” he says, without hesitation. “That is exactly what I hoped you would ask.” And that is all I need to hear. 

“Then… can you kiss me, please?”

Instead of responding, he presses his lips to mine, resting his palm against the tree right beside my shoulder as he kisses me fiercely, the spot where our bodies join almost sparking with the friction. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and latch onto him, climbing up his lithe form like a tree and curling my legs around him. 

Soon we end up in the sand with me straddling Victor’s lap as his strong hands rove over my back and my fingers thread through his hair before I press him backward into the soft, warm grains. He rolls us over so that I lay on my back with him sat between my legs and shoving my arms down on either side of my head. 

After a few minutes we break for air, listening to each other’s breathing and the soft push and pull of the waves as they crash on the beach beside us. Victor releases me from his hold, but I remain in the sand, my arms staying in place in surrender as I stare up at him. He strokes my face, allowing his fingertips to travel down to my neck and across my chest, each point of his journey shocking me with electricity. As he smiles down at me, my body presses into his touch and my eyes flutter closed once more. 

“We should wash again,” he says after a moment of drawing curlicues on my skin.

Victor sits back on his feet before rising as I prop myself up on my elbows. When he offers a hand to me, I take it, pulling myself to stand beside him. We pick up our swords from the ground and sheathe them before we hike up the hill, shoulders and fingers knocking together as we converse, until somehow, our hands join, tangled together like a clump of seaweed deposited on the sand by the sea, and we return to the now deserted lake. 

I disrobe and slip into the water as I watch Victor do the same. He seems more at ease as he wades beside me, less likely to flinch from my stare, this time holding my gaze in his own as he reaches out to grab my chin, tilting it up so he can kiss me. I like that once we’ve overcome the hurdle of first contact, he seems bolder, despite his clear lack of experience. But that can be corrected.

“How do you feel?” he asks me, running his knuckles up the sides of my arms under the water.

“Good,” I say, floating closer to him so that our bodies are only a few inches apart. “A bit surprised. But good.”

“Why surprised?” he asks, as he cups his hand, fills it with water, and pours it on my hair. 

“I had no idea you were even attracted to me. If I hadn’t known you cared for me I would have thought you hate me with how cold you would be to me sometimes, especially after our sparring matches.”

He studies me for a moment before lowering his eyes, then says: “It was nothing against you personally. I would simply… become so… _overwhelmed_ … that I would have to excuse myself to take care of myself. And this was also at the time when I felt as if I were doing something wrong. But I do not have those feelings anymore.”

Upon hearing this admission, I cannot help but smile, my face heating up. His coyness endears me, somehow. I shake my head and sigh before I say: “I also found our spars to be… arousing. But because I didn’t know how you felt, I found your coldness… painful. So I would prefer if you tell me what’s on your mind instead of avoiding me.”

“Because I was dealing with a great deal of shame, it was difficult. But I am no longer ashamed,” he says, staring me directly in the face. “From the moment I saw you, I desired you. I simply could not accept that part of myself until now. Seeing you, so confident in yourself… And all our comrades, as well… It was only a matter of time before I realized that I cannot deny myself any longer.”

I rest my hands on the sides of his neck, our noses hovering a hair’s-length apart. “I desired you from the moment I first saw you, too,” I say.

“Oh.”

“Were you truly that oblivious?”

“Well… I suppose I was. But… I will try my best not to keep things from you again. In all this time when I have had only myself to confide in and to rely upon… It has been difficult for me to entrust my thoughts with others. But you are my friend and confidant… and I think perhaps now… what should I call you? I trust you. So I should share my burden with you.”

“Thank you,” I say, dropping my gaze to his lips as he wraps his arms around my back and I shiver as the cool wind blows against my damp skin as the sun begins to set. “I suppose it’s too early to call ourselves matelots or husbands so for now I suppose I would be… your paramour? Or lover, if you prefer?”

“I suppose I shall think about it,” he says against my lips, before he kisses me again.

Once we’ve found ourselves to be sufficiently clean, free from as many tiny grains of sand as possible, we make our way to the inn, where the rest of the crew have taken refuge for the night. Its windows appear to have been boarded up for years, some of the nails popping out from their places and some of the panels even hanging off the structure as if even a light breeze would bring them toppling to the ground. We enter to see Felix over the stove at the center of the foyer, cooking what looks like curried coconut and vegetables, which he offers us with some bread.

We eat ravenously, the smell of food hitting our nostrils alerting us to the fact that we are in fact famished from the energy we’d burnt sparring and trying with a modicum of success to avoid fornication. With full stomachs, we journey upstairs by candlelight, hands joined, and Felix eyes us but says nothing. Victor chooses a room at random, inviting me to bed with him, and I oblige. 

After we shake out the sheets and remove the dust that had gathered, we disrobe down to our underclothes and slip into bed. We lay beside each other on our backs, staring at the ceiling, and I glance at Victor in the dark, still aware of his quickened pace of breathing that indicates he is still awake.

Humming, I roll over and curl up against his side, resting my head on his arm right before the spot where it meets the shoulder as he turns toward me and engulfs me with his frame. I fall asleep breathing him in, shielded until the morning with our bodies slotted together like two ships that had collided and lay wrecked at the bottom of the sea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, thanks so much for reading this chapter. As I've been saying, things are going to get spicier as the story progresses because that's the nature of these sorts of passionate relationships. Hopefully it's not too shocking. And I hope you continue to enjoy the story! Anyway, onto Victor's chapter!


	20. Victor Salazar - 24 May, 1787; Isla Cruces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lake wins a bet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Benji’s face falls and he swallows before he whispers: “Did you truly regret it?”
> 
> “No. It was foolish for me to ever think that. But I want to be honest with you. I do not regret it at all. And even if you had not become my closest confidant and the person I care for the most in this life… I would still have done it. Because it was only the correct thing to do.”

The sound of shrieks outside the room snap me awake and from my reverie, snatching me away from the intoxicating sensation of Benji pressed against me and trusting me even in his sleep. He jolts into consciousness in my arms, rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and I cannot stop myself from pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead, combining with it all the affection I have for him and tying it neatly with a bow. 

Loud banging at the door interrupts our moment as the hinges, rusted with time, give out, and the structure breaks, falling forward into a dusty heap and creating little clouds that float up from the floor. In the doorway stands Lake, mid-knock, the feather in her hat fluttering from the impact.

“Oh. Mornin’, lads,” she says, blinking a few times as her eyes dart between Benji and I several times. “This is… unexpected. Hold on…” she turns to face in the opposite direction and calls down the corridor. “All of you owe me five galleons each! Pay up!”

A collective groan filters through the inn. I raise an eyebrow, sitting up straight and squinting as the morning light shines in through the doorway. 

“What’s going on?” Benji asks as he sits up beside me, eyelids heavy on his face.

“We’re about to sail off to Shipwreck Island again and see if it’s still there so get a move on it,” Lake says as she pulls out a pocket watch from her trousers and opens it up.

“No I mean, what’s this you’re saying about people owing you galleons?” Benji says as he brushes his hair from his face and all but shoves me from the bed.

“Ah…  _ That… _ Well, we had a little bit of a wager to see when you two would finally get together and it looks like my guess of eighteen days was correct. I’m so smart,” Lake says, clapping her hands and patting herself on the shoulder.

“Wonderful,” Benji says with a grimace, his voice dripping with sarcasm, as he searches for his discarded clothes on the floor, coughing as he kicks up more dust. Even though he is facing away from me, I can see the light dusting of pink on his cheeks. “So glad we could provide you lot with some entertainment.”

As I slide onto the floor, I hear Benji groan, and I am wont to do the same. My face also heats up at the fact that we are sometimes the subject of conversation while absent from the gatherings of the rest of the crew. The sting of humiliation riddles my insides, but I also cannot stop myself from taking a bit of pride in that; while it had taken us a long while to decipher each other’s desires, the fact that it was visible from a distance is telling. Even if it is simply while aboard the  _ Rainbow Horizon _ , I want it to be known that Benji is mine, and that we serve each other. 

“Get over it,” Lake says as she leaves, “you two are cute, after all. Not our fault you’ve been making eyes at each other since you joined our crew.”

“Thank you,” I say with as polite a smile as I can muster. “May we have some privacy so we can get ready? We will meet you on the ship.”

“All right. You’ve got ten minutes.”

When Lake has gone, I frown at our collapsed door and sigh. As I dress myself, I watch Benji, who does the same with short, jerky movements as if he would be more than happy to tear his own limbs off. 

“Is everything all right?” I ask him, adjusting my hat before placing a hand on his back between his shoulder blades. 

“I’m fi-” he says, before he stops himself, turning to gaze at me, bristling. “Actually, I’m irritated.”

“Why?” I ask, as I lead us through the door and down the stairs.

“I don’t like having my personal life talked about,” he says, glancing away from me. “It reminds me of when I was back in Port Royal and everyone had something to say about me. You learn to ignore it but… it’s still annoying knowing it happens.”

“Ah, I see,” I say with a nod. “I imagine they meant no harm but I can see how it can be frustrating.”

“It’s none of their  _ business _ is all,” Benji says, finally turning to look at me as we trek down the grassy hill. “Maybe I’m overreacting but it doesn’t make me like it any more.”

“Your reaction is justified,” I say, allowing my arm to wrap around his shoulders and Benji leans into my touch. “But does that mean you would prefer to limit our displays of affection?”

“Not at all,” he says, snaking his arm around my back and letting his fingers cling to the back of my shirt. “I want us to be as open as we can, I just don’t want people to say shit.”

“Perhaps that will simply have to be something we accept, then,” I say as we walk across the creaky wooden planks onto the  _ Rainbow Horizon _ . “It may be unrealistic to have both options and so I suppose it would be best to choose. Let them talk; we will simply not listen.”

Benji sighs but nods nonetheless as we part for a moment. I offer him my hand as we descend into the lower deck again. When we round the corner toward our quarters, I press Benji up against the wall between the two windows beside the covered cupboard, and I slip my tongue into his mouth; all he can do is melt and moan against me as he grabs the front of my shirt. When we pull away, panting, I can see his hazel eyes darkening.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to handle this ‘nothing below the belt’ thing if you keep doing that,” he mutters against my lips before nipping at them gently. 

“No one is forcing us to adhere to strict guidelines,” I say, my hand resting on his hip, just at belt level.

“That’s true,” he says with a breathy chuckle. “It’s all really for your sake.”

“What exactly are we waiting for?” 

“Hmm… good question. I suppose, curse or no curse, we’re either waiting for all eternity, which would mean it doesn’t matter,  _ or _ if we  _ do _ break the curse, we don’t know when we’ll die, which also means it doesn’t matter. But the question is… are you in this pirate business for good?”

“Of course,” I say without hesitation.

“Even with all the killing and death?”

“Aye. And everything else that comes with it.”

“As am I,” he says with a smile, brushing my curls from my face. 

I kiss him once more, my body once again aflame, my veins flooding me with molten iron as Benji responds, his hands clutching at my front, vice-like, which heightens the sensation of the proximity of our bodies as we breathe the same oxygen, share the same space and tangle limbs like fallen palm fronds in the breeze. 

And at that moment, the sound of heels clicking against the creaking boards of the ship stop us, grabbing us from the sky and throwing us directly back into our salty reality. Someone clears their throat from nearby.

“Hope we aren’t interrupting anything,” Andrew says, eyes wide. He has his arm wrapped around a scandalized-looking Felix’s waist. “You two are literally inches from your chambers, in case you forgot.”

“We know,” Benji says, face flushing as he looks away. “Mind your business.”

Stepping back from Benji, I stare at the ground. “Perhaps we should go… I imagine a bed is more comfortable than the wall.”

“It would be if it weren’t child-sized,” Benji retorts, but retreats from the wall nonetheless, taking my hand. He adds the next part in a quieter voice that makes my face redden further: “And you know I like when you pin me against things.”

“You two couldn’t have waited a  _ couple  _ more days before getting all over each other?” Felix asks, crossing his arms over his chest with a pout. “I lost half my savings.”

“No one held a gun to your head and made you place a wager, my love,” Andrew says, patting Felix’s shoulder and kissing him gently. “We should probably stop before Lake cleans out all our money.”

Felix grumbles something under his breath as he and Andrew continue down the corridor before disappearing into Andrew’s room. 

“Anyway…” Benji says, as I walk us to my room before slipping the key in and unlocking the door. “I think I’ll miss this little curse of ours because now there’s a real chance that one of us could die and I don’t know if I can handle it.”

With a sigh, I pull him into the room as the ship begins to move and the abandoned island we had sought solace upon disappears into the distance, and with it, our sense of peace. I rest my hands upon Benji’s shoulders, sliding one of them to press against the side of his neck as I tip his chin up with my thumb to look at me. 

“I suppose there is no good in telling you that everything will be fine and that we will not perish,” I say, “but as long as we look out for each other, that is all that matters. This life does not come without its risks.”

“It would be so much easier if we didn’t care for each other,” Benji says, wrapping his arms around my middle with a smile before he adds: “But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Nor would I,” I say, punctuating my words with a kiss. When we pull away, I say: “When I was battling my demons, part of me regretted helping you. Because it meant I had to confront myself. And the reality that I will never desire a woman as a man apparently should.”

Benji’s face falls and he swallows before he whispers: “Did you truly regret it?”

“No. It was foolish for me to ever think that. But I want to be honest with you. I do not regret it at all. And even if you had not become my closest confidant and the person I care for the most in this life… I would still have done it. Because it was only the correct thing to do.”

“Don’t scare me like that,” Benji says as I gaze into his eyes, his own pupils meeting mine. “This conversation has been chaotic enough that I think you owe me for making me go through it.”

“Oh, do I, now?” I ask, stepping away from him. “Stay there,” I say, as I slip behind him, my lips finding the column of his neck. 

“Mhm, you certainly do…” he murmurs in response.

He cups my face as he allows his own head to fall back and rest on my shoulder as I wrap my arms around him, my hands trailing up Benji’s sides.

“Do you want to go further?” I whisper in his ear, feeling him shiver against me like the ferns in the jungle as an animal skitters by. “I need you to show me what to do.”

For a moment, he does not say anything. He simply disrobes, lifting his shirt over his head and throwing it across the room, followed by his boots, which he kicks aside, and finally, his trousers, which he tosses in the opposite direction. When he is done, standing bare, he runs a hand through his hair to remove it from his face.

“It seems you liked what you saw down at the lake,” he says, rubbing himself against me. “What did you want to do to me?”

“I-If you continue doing this I—“

“You’ll what?” he asks, glancing at me from the side of his eye with a wicked grin. “Why don’t you do something about it, then?”

I swallow, feeling my smallclothes tighten around me. Grabbing Benji by the hips to still him as my heart threatens to bloom from my chest like a flowering magnolia in the spring while I confront the prospect of my own deflowering, I press Benji up against the wall.

“Stop,” I say in his ear, and he obeys.

“Then put it in me,” he retorts.

And so I undo my trousers and do exactly what he asks of me. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for this update! I hope you enjoy! And I hope you tune in for the next chapters. Remember, 1 comment = 1 Venji kiss and... sword fight. See you next update!


	21. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 28 May, 1787; Somewhere in the Caribbean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Rainbow Horizon_ goes under.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “What’s going on here?” Victor asks, before Lake juts a thumb over her shoulder.
> 
> Mia’s face is cold as steel as she steers. She asks: “Have Felix and the monkey touched the coins?”
> 
> “Yes, but I don’t know why that’s coming up now,” I say, raising my eyebrow.

I awaken to the sound of the rolling sea in my ear before it stops and begins again. When I glance behind me I see Victor’s peaceful face pressed against me as he uses all his subconscious strength to keep me from falling off the side of his bed, my arms and legs dangling like the corners of papers stacked on a shelf that is too short. His sweaty arm sticks to my skin, but I feel content despite being sore from both the awkward, puzzle-like sleeping position and the fact that we’d had our second round of exploits that day. 

With a sigh I unfurl Victor’s limbs from me as slowly and as quietly as I can before I rise, wincing as I accidentally put pressure on the welts I’d accumulated on my bottom. I gather my clothes from the various corners of Victor’s room, where they seem to spend far more time than on my body, and I dress myself, then fix my hair in the tiny mirror I picked up off the floor where it ended up somehow not breaking after being shoved off to make space for me during one of our… sessions.

Once I deem myself presentable, I plant a soft kiss to Victor’s sleeping face — a face that doesn’t betray the many facets it’s capable of presenting, and some only I have been able to see — before I slip out of the room, pressing my lips together into a line as I try not to make the door click.

It seems like my attempt is successful as I turn to return to my room, when I see Felix marching down the corridor with a knowing smile pasted to his lips and Jack perched on his head peeling the string off the sides of a banana:

“Good afternoon,” Felix says, “how have you lovebirds been getting on? I didn’t want to eavesdrop so I had to go down to the kitchen for a bit but I’m glad you two are having a good time.”

My face reddens immediately before I say: “Were we really that loud? Sorry about that.”

“Oh, no. It’s normal and healthy,” Felix reassured me with an awkward pat on the shoulder. “Just don’t let it get in the way of your work. The captains want you two on lookout and we know how bad Victor is with that…”

“True,” I say with a chuckle. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to get used to people being so uninhibited. “By the way, you wouldn’t happen to have any ice, would you?”

“Aye, I’ll bring you some,” he says, as Jack leaps down to the floor from his head as he leaves.

The tiny monkey coughs up dust as he walks over to me with a piece of his banana in his equally tiny paws and offers it to me with a frown. 

“No, thank you,” I say with a wave of my hand and a smile. 

He screeches and runs down the corridor as I contemplate waking Victor although I also want him to sleep as long as he can because despite being young, his stamina could be improved. But I don’t want to keep the captains waiting and have to hear about it, so after Felix returns with some ice and I take care of myself, which is easy work as my welts fade away on their own, and then I slip back into Victor’s room.

When I enter, I see Victor has turned around onto his other side, and the sheets part to reveal a fading red sea of lines crossing each other and running in all directions. I cover my face in shame; I’d never had to witness my own handiwork afterward before. But I also can’t help but smile; perhaps it’s a testament, too, of how attentive a lover Victor can be. He learns very quickly. I lean over him, resting a hand on his shoulder and shaking him a bit to rouse him from his slumber. 

“Victor, my love,” I say, biting my lip once I realize how easily those words fall from my tongue, “we’ve got work to do.”

With a groan, Victor rolls onto his back with a hiss, scratching at his shoulder before I take his hand in my own to stop him. 

“What time is it?” He asks, rubbing the sleep from his eyes before turning his gaze to me with a smile.

I glance out the window into the clouded sky before I say: “Looks like around one.”

“And what kind of work do they need us to do now?”

As my lip pulls to the side, I hesitate before I say: “We’re on lookout today.”

Closing his eyes again, Victor sits up, and I slip my hand into his to help him up. He scratches at his shoulders again and I pull his arm away. 

“Then I suppose we can go again later,” he says as he slips from beneath the sheets, smirking.

“We’ll see. You really did a number on me and looks like I did the same to you,” I reply, fidgeting with my hair. “Stop scratching. See? They’re already going away.”

Victor rises, picks up the mirror and holds it so that he can examine the last remnants of my work before his eyes widen and his face reddens. 

“Oh… that is what you mean,” he says.

“Thankfully it went away but I wouldn’t even need to show you my ass, you know what you did. Although I guess there’s something nice about that curse healing us so quickly… And imagine how fun it’ll be when we can feel things properly again...” I say with a grin, and I can’t help but delight in how Victor blushes an even deeper shade of red like a raspberry, and this mixes nicely with his bronze skin. Maybe I’ll get something for that later… 

“But I did not…  _ hurt _ you, did I?” he asks, eyes going wide.

“No. It was a good kind of pain,” I say, shaking my head and feeling my face grow hot. 

“Oh… Then, you have taught me well,” he says as he slides into his trousers before taking my chin between his fingers and pulling me into a kiss. “Now, go to the upper deck and I will meet you there in a moment,” he mutters against my lips, before gently swatting my behind.

“But I want to go again,” I whine before I pout, and Victor rolls his eyes as he leans down to kiss me again. 

He pinches me on the hip and I giggle in response as he says: “Go before I punish you. And not the fun kind of punishment, either.”

“All right, all right. I’m going. But don’t take too long,” I say with a wink before I step out into the corridor and wave to Andrew as I pass him playing sentinel to Davy Jones.

Humming to myself, I shove my hands in my pockets as I ascend the stairs to the upper deck to see Mia and Lake at the helm before the burnt-out quarterdeck, with Mia at the wheel, eyes focused forward on the empty, open blue expanse of the Caribbean as the wind whips through her hat. 

“Good afternoon, captains,” I say, leaning against the quarterdeck. “What’ll it be today? Any word on when we’ll be at Shipwreck Island?”

“It only took you long enough. Where’s your husband?” Lake asks as she plops the spyglass in my hand. “And don’t worry, we’ve still got a few days sail before we get there.”

“Wonderful… And  _ Victor  _ is on his way,” I say, feeling my face heat up at the insinuation. “But we haven’t gotten there yet. To the husband thing, I mean.”

“Well, it would do you two good to marry as soon as we break this curse,” Mia says, not moving her eyes from directly before her. “We don’t try to but we could always be in some sort of danger, savvy?”

My face does… something upon hearing this, and I’m not sure what. As much as I care for Victor, and as much I am beginning to imagine our future, shared between us both and binding us together until our candles are snuffed out by the wind, something about the prospect of marriage, especially at this stage, fills me with a dread that runs through me like a sticky sludge. 

“Don’t look at us like that, Navy boy,” Lake says, “Mia’s right. If you amass enough of a fortune you’d want it to go to someone you trust, right? And we won’t be around forever, either. Should you need to join another crew, for whatever reason, you’ll have a legally binding contract that serves as proof of your union out here on the seas.”

“Best to get it over and done with now that you know you’ve met your match,” Mia says, her eyes shifting ever so slightly toward me. “If it were up to me I would have performed the ceremony already but unfortunately it requires the parties involved to make the choice, not I.”

“Think about it,” Lake says before she grabs me by the shoulder. “Now go watch our surroundings because for all we know we could have someone approaching us to lay siege as we speak.”

I grumble as I leap down the stairs, pocketing my spyglass and climbing the rope ladder up to the mast. Peeking through the long cylindrical device, I scan the area around us slowly, focusing on spotting any possible foes on the horizon. So far it appears that the coast is clear…

Until a dot comes to life off in the distance, growing larger and larger as quickly as it had appeared. That dot is joined by another dot. And then three more. They keep multiplying. I can feel the buzzing in my ears as I scramble down the ladder, being careful not to send myself careening down to the deck again.

“We’ve got at least twenty ships approaching us on the starboard side at 30 degrees and they’re coming… really quickly,” I say over the roaring in my ears.

“There’s no way we’ll lose them in time,” Lake says, glancing out in the direction of the approaching armada. 

When I look through the spyglass again, I see the Union Jacks waving at the masts and I resist the urge to vomit before I say: “It’s the British.”

Victor ascends the stairs to finally join us, wrapping an arm around my shoulders as he approaches.

“What’s going on here?” Victor asks, before Lake juts a thumb over her shoulder.

Mia’s face is cold as steel as she steers. She asks: “Have Felix and the monkey touched the coins?”

“Yes, but I don’t know why that’s coming up now,” I say, raising my eyebrow.

“We need to go under,” Mia says as she presses down one of the boards beside the wheel, and a lever pops out. “It’s the only way we’ll outrun them.”

“Under like under the sea?” I ask, my voice rising a few octaves, and I can feel Victor clutching at me tightly. 

“Are you sure, my love?” Lake says cautiously, looking over her shoulder again at the armada that seems to have tripled in size since we last saw it.

“Aye. All of you, inside. Now. And lock the hatch,” is all Mia says as she shoos us with a wave of her hand.

Upon seeing her expression and hearing her tone, not even Lake questions her orders, and so we all retreat into the lower deck and lock the hatch behind us as instructed. I peer up through the grates and as I do so, I hear a sharp  _ crack  _ and I see the mast collapse in on itself like the spyglass in my hand as the sails seem to bend in half, condensing and folding into each other before falling silent for a moment.

Before I can process what is happening, I feel us tip to the side, and the entire lower deck floods, filling up to the brim with water. I brace myself against the wall and against Victor as my sense of gravity upends completely.

My hands glow blue and I see my skeleton through my skin. And I breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all, hope you enjoyed this chapter. First off, I want to give a big shoutout and thank you to [temporarylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarylove/pseuds/temporarylove) for her generous support in acting as my sensitivity reader for the spicier chapters because I wanted to ensure I wrote them properly. 
> 
> Once again, things are going to continue to be spicy as the story progresses so I'm putting out a blanket warning for that, even though I've included that in the tags already. And I'm happy to say that I just reached the 50k mark for this story today which means I've officially surpassed my goal for NaNoWriMo this year, but the story is not over yet. Hope you continue to read and enjoy, and onto Victor's POV next...


	22. Victor Salazar - 4 June, 1787; Somewhere in the Caribbean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benji and Victor warm up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Enough of that,” I say, sitting back and patting the spot beside me, “come here and talk to me. If something is on your mind I want to know and not simply use this as a distraction. I care about you.”
> 
> He grumbles as he slides to sit next to me, slotting himself against my shoulder and letting his head rest there before he says: “I’ve had a lot on my mind. Aside from the whole ‘being underwater for six days’ thing.”

The _Rainbow Horizon_ ascends from beneath the waves like a majestic orca prepared to feast, the seawater raining down from the decks like a deluge as we finally break the surface after almost a week underwater. I open my window to allow the breeze in and to expel the rest of the water, sighing as I touch my now entirely soaked mattress, wondering when it will finally dry. My desk, which had been populated by books at one point but had been cleared for more important things (and by that I mean Benji) now becomes home to my soggy books once again as I pick them up from the floor as gently as I can to avoid tearing them apart.

I shiver at the sensation of the air hitting my wet skin and at the strangeness of breathing a much lighter form of oxygen, my lungs expanding far too much than they need to. And the light from outside burns compared to the diluted inkiness of the realm beneath the surface. I hope we never have to do that again. 

Retreating from my room, I knock on Benji’s door, and he exits, shaking and pale and looking like he has come down with a cold. I pull him to my chest, pressing his head against me as we both shake in want of warmth. It had not been so uncomfortable while underwater, but now that we have surfaced, it is almost unbearable.

Rubbing Benji’s arms with my hands, I lead him to the stairs, passing by the surprisingly untouched cupboard under the stairs, and we unlock the hatch before ascending to the main deck to finally feel the sun on our skin properly. And Mia stands before the wheel, the look in her eyes still determined, as Lake comes beside her to wrench her hands away from the wheel.

“You did a brilliant job, my love,” Lake mutters into her ear as she allows her wife to lean on her. “But for now, let’s rest… Victor, you steer.”

“Me?” I ask, pointing to myself. “Do I look like I know what to do?”

“Someone’s got to do it.”

I look to Benji, who sniffles pathetically beside me as he clings to my arm, and I stroke his hair before planting a kiss to his forehead. It would pain me to subject Benji to being cold and alone at this moment, but there does not seem to be much of an alternative. Unless…

“Here, stand in front of me, _mi amor_ ,” I say, grasping at the wheel with one hand to steady it on course as I gently guide him to stand before me so he can lean back against me. “How do you feel?”

“This is nice,” he says quietly, glancing back at me with a weak smile. “I just can’t wait to be dry.”

“Me neither,” I say, taking Benji’s hands in my own and resting them on the wheel so we can steer together. 

After a few moments of foreignness, when the wheel in our hands feels like a freshly wrapped cutlass not designed to conform to our hands, the leather softens from the heat of our skin. I press my cheek against Benji’s and I can see his eyes have fallen closed, and I begin to wonder if he has truly fallen ill. As Felix and Andrew ascend the stairs as well, wearing only their smallclothes, I wave them over to relieve me. Once Felix takes the wheel from me, I rouse Benji with a light jostle, and his eyes flutter open.

Shaking my head, I lead him down to the lower deck to remove our wet clothes, too, so we can hang them to dry. I sit us down by the furnace in the kitchen, which somehow managed to survive the journey underwater due to being in an air-tight environment, so we can warm up a bit, and Benji seems to come back to life like a freshly watered wildflower as he sits beside me with his head on my shoulder. He turns his face to me and slowly closes his eyes with a crooked smile hanging from his lips as he gently cups my face in his hand and brings our lips together. 

“You know what would help us warm up?” Benji asks, opening his eye to a slit. 

“I may have an idea,” I say, as I pull him by the arm to sit on my lap, which he happily obliges as he burrows into me.

“It’s good we have the kitchen to ourselves,” he says, kissing up the side of my neck with a breathy chuckle.

“What if someone sees us?” I ask, tugging at his hair and making him moan against my skin as he rubs against me.

“Let them see us,” he says with a shrug, as I trail my hand down his back and to his behind, giving it a squeeze. Soft yet firm. And the noise Benji makes at the touch makes it even more satisfying.

“So… you would like for them to see you like this,” I say, leaning forward and slowly depositing Benji on the floor before sitting between his legs. “Turn around,” I say, “and get on your knees.”

“You didn’t ask nicely,” he says, sitting up and smirking at me.

“Since when am I meant to ‘ask nicely’?” I ask him; I see the gears in his cranium turning as he tries to come up with an excuse.

“Since… well,” he says, scratching his head, and I cannot help the unconscious movement of my lip as it curls up, too. 

“Try again,” I whisper in his ear as I grasp him by the chin.

“What I meant to say was… Yes, Sir,” he says, his voice getting quieter with each word. 

“Good boy,” I say, releasing my hold and watching as Benji finally complies, making a show of turning around and watching me over his shoulder. “You tend to put up more of a fight, though. Is something bothering you?”

“Your cock not being in me is what’s bothering me,” he says, and I sigh.

“Enough of that,” I say, sitting back and patting the spot beside me, “come here and talk to me. If something is on your mind I want to know and not simply use this as a distraction. I care about you.”

He grumbles as he slides to sit next to me, slotting himself against my shoulder and letting his head rest there before he says: “I’ve had a lot on my mind. Aside from the whole ‘being underwater for six days’ thing.”

“Tell me about it.”

Eyes downcast, Benji fidgets with his hands as he bites his lip. I gently stroke his back, the silence between us thick, a woolen tapestry woven with the gold threads of our secrets. 

“I don’t know how else to say this…” he says before swallowing, taking my hand in his own, and raising his gaze to mine. “Would you marry me?”

It is as if a strike of lightning from the clouds above has pierced through me, and all I can do is stare at him, unblinking, for a full minute. Perhaps that is how long it truly was, but to me it feels like an eternity, dragging its slimy, decaying tail behind it as it marches on. I can see Benji’s expression falter as he looks away. 

“All right, never mind. Forget I said anything,” he says quietly, voice shaking as he shrugs my hand off him and rises to his feet.

“Wait!” I say, pushing myself up and grabbing him by the wrist. “I did not say no.”

He raises an eyebrow, wiping his eye with the back of his hand as he returns to me. I embrace him, wrapping my arms around his back. 

“You’re taking a very long time to answer,” he says against my neck.

“This is… surprising, is all. We who have known each other all of a month... I have seen marriages in shorter time than this but they were rarely for love,” I say as I pull away, smoothing down some of Benji’s hair.

“Well, there is a property benefit, of course. But I do care for you. Deeply. And I’ve never felt this way for anyone before,” he says, cupping my face in his hand as he stares up at me. “As soon as the curse is lifted, we should do it.”

I return his gaze and realize in an instant that when I look at Benji, I can see the rest of our lives in his irises, our shared future in which we are together — sailing across the vast expanse, swords clashing with those of the English as we slice their necks and throw them into the sea, our backs pressed against each other as we protect one another, but most importantly of all, opening my eyes to see Benji sleeping peacefully beside me with the knowledge that I have his devotion, his _love_ and he mine — and I realize the answer has been before me this entire time.

“And I have never felt this way for anyone, either,” I say. “I accept your proposal.”

“It took you long enough, you were starting to make me think you were going to say no,” he says with a roll of his eyes, and I chuckle as I close the gap between us.

“While I appreciate directness, perhaps preface these types of subjects with a warning so I can process them next time,” I say with a smile when we pull apart.

“I’ll remember that for the next time I ask you to marry me,” he teases, as he slides his hands down my back to my sides and finally to the pockets on the back of my trousers and squeezing as he flashes me a mischievous grin.

“Do that one more time and see what happens.”

When Benji bites and digs his fingers into my behind again, as I should have expected him to, my hand reaches up and grabs his hair at the roots, and I pull his head back to expose his neck. I know he simply wants a rise from me, because this is fun for him, so I play along.

“Ow,” he says, his smirk only faltering a bit, his grip still ironclad. 

“Maybe next time I should tie you up so you can learn to keep your hands to yourself.”

Benji presses his lips together in thought for a moment before he says: “Would you really?”

Rolling my eyes and licking my teeth, I nod. “We have rope… everywhere. But anyway.”

I could feel myself losing focus and it was time to get back on the topic at hand. He did not entrust me with power for me to take it lightly.

“Let go of me,” I warn him. “Your punishment is already racking up.”

“So, hypothetically speaking, what happens if I _don’t_ let go?” 

“I have not decided yet. But I can assure you it will not be fun for you.”

“Let me think about it,” he says, then pauses for a moment longer, weighing his options in the scale of his mind, taking his time. 

“You have five seconds,” I say, feeling my patience wearing thinner and thinner like the soles on a pair of old leather boots. “One… two… three…”

He finally releases his hold on me when I get to three. I grip his hair tighter, but deliberate and with control, balling a bit more of it in my fist as I drag him to the kitchen table and bend him over it face-first with enough force and pressure to give the illusion that I _could_ hurt him -- but I would never abuse his trust in that way; I care about him too much. 

“What will it be, then? A fucking or a spanking?” I ask as I remove his undergarments and throw them across the room.

“Can I pick both?”

“No. One or the other,” I say as I kneel behind him.

I feel the ship grind to a halt. All of a sudden, footsteps click down the hallway.

Jack screeches, the noise vibrating through my bones.

“Hey we’re suppo— What in the bloody _Hell_ is wrong with you two? We _eat_ on that table!” Andrew bellows and Felix shrieks beside him.

Panic coursing through my veins like hot oil threatening to burst alight, I scramble to shield Benji with my body, although I imagine it is too late. He giggles behind me as Andrew grabs Felix by the arm and drags him in the opposite direction. With my face red and feverish, I return Benji’s undergarments to him. I hold him for a moment as we calm ourselves, savoring the closeness of each other’s bodies before we part with the understanding that we will continue at another time.

Sighing, we dress in our partially dried clothes, strapping our swords to our sides as we exit to the upper deck, holding our heads high as we pretend we did not, just moments ago, get caught in the most compromising position possible. I drape my arm across Benji’s neck as he wraps his around my back, and I kiss his forehead as a reminder of my devotion to him. 

From the deck, not far off in the distance, sits the maelstrom, ten times larger than the last time we had seen it. The wind whips through the area, threatening to tear our hats from our heads. 

And where Shipwreck Island had been lies nothing but a vortex leading straight into the sea. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to [temporarylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarylove/pseuds/temporarylove) once again for all the sensitivity reading and just being super helpful generally. 
> 
> That's it for the next update. I'm curious to hear ya'll's thoughts as usual. Was it spicy enough? Too spicy? Were you expecting the progression of the plot? There's quite a bit more where that came from so tune in next time. And remember, 1 comment = 1 Venji having a good time and living a nice long life together while swordfighting. See you next time!


	23. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 4 June, 1787; Shipwreck Island Maelstrom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew go on several missions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You didn’t have to come up here if it scares you, you know,” I say, resting my hand on his face and sighing as I look into his eyes.
> 
> “I wanted to see you,” he says, wrapping his arms around me.
> 
> “Don’t look down, just look at me…” I say in an attempt to reassure him.

We gaze out into the rumbling, roiling maelstrom ahead of us, and it is as if our ship is inching closer and closer to the edge of it. Soon it will pull us in and draw us to the seafloor, smashing us into a pulp against whatever lies in wait along the boundaries of the vortex. I wonder how on earth we can go about breaking the curse, now that the island where we had found the coins no longer exists. We were too late. And I blame myself more than anyone for the mess we’ve gotten into now. I glance down at my feet, feeling Victor’s arm around me, anchoring me to my surroundings and reminding me of where I am. But now I wish he didn’t.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Lake asks, leaning against one of the rope ladders leading up to the mast. 

“Well, it looks like we’re just stuck being zombie pirates forever. Brilliant,” Felix says with a smile, earning a glare from Andrew.

“My love, this is the opposite of brilliant. It means we’re fucked,” Andrew says.

I feel Victor tense beside me as he casts his gaze down, too, and I sigh. Mia, her expression stony, undoes the belt holding her cutlass at her hip and shrugs off her jacket before handing both items to Lake. She shoves the purse of coins into her pocket. Finally, she takes the corpse of the hanging octopus-man under her arm as if he weighs as little as a single potato.

“You may not like what I have to say, but I have a plan,” Mia says as she rolls up her sleeves. “I will bring the coins and Davy Jones into the maelstrom. And I will speak to Calypso. She’s my great-grandmother and I know this is her doing. If the curse lifted while we were all underwater, I would be the only one who survives because I have Calypso’s protection. And you all… don’t.”

We all stare at her in a stunned silence. I can tell she has already decided, but Lake looks furious, her eyebrows pressing together as if one wanted to devour the other. She grabs Mia by the front of her blouse with tears streaming down her face, but Mia doesn’t react.

“How could you decide this without consulting me?” Lake asks, her voice cracking.

“There’s nothing to consult you about,” Mia replies, wiping her face with her palm. “I’m going and you can’t stop me.”

“But what if you die?”

“I won’t.”

“But you  _ could _ .”

“See, this is why I couldn’t tell you,  _ cherie _ .”

“Mia… I love you so much,” Lake mutters, before she presses her lips to Mia’s for a long moment, their bodies wrapping together like two eels on a reef. 

“I love you, too. Now you’re in charge while I’m gone. But only for a moment. Because, as I said, I  _ will _ return. I’ll use this to find you.”

When they separate, Mia unlatches Lake from her, removes the pendant from her own neck and gives it to her wife. She steps away, casting one last longing look to Lake before she raises a hand in a short wave.

“Goodbye, Lake. Goodbye, lads. For now, at least.”

And those are the last words she utters before she leaps overboard with a red-eyed Davy Jones in hand, diving beneath the waves. Lake steps to the spot from where Mia had leapt, staring into the water where her body had made contact with the surface, and she simply stares for several long moments before turning away, cradling her wife’s belongings to her chest and feeling the pendant with her fingers with a pensive expression. 

“All right, enough of that,” Lake says, as she gazes out in the opposite direction, where several ships flying the inverted colors of the Jolly Roger had accumulated on the horizon. “We have a bunch of allies looking to reconvene the Brethren Court somewhere else since Shipwreck Island is… caput. So I need all hands on deck to get us there.”

“How do we know that’s the right way to go and that we won’t be ambushed?” I ask. 

“Did you not see the parrot, Navy boy?” Lake says, pointing up to the mast where a red and green macaw sits perched, keeping watch over us. “It brought us a message telling us they come in peace. And they know of us. We have an agreement. Look at all the white flags.”

Raising an eyebrow, I observe it quietly for a moment before I cross the deck and say: “I hope you’re right.”

As Lake takes the wheel, she spins it as far as she can go and the  _ Rainbow Horizon  _ tilts as it turns almost one hundred and eighty degrees on its side, and then, putting as much energy as we can into it as I unfurl the sails completely, the ship propels forward with such speed and force that we all almost topple over and would easily fall overboard if we hadn’t all been latched onto something tightly. I grip at the rope attached to the sail tightly, dangling as we turn, until my feet are back safely on the deck and we make our way toward the fleet of ships ahead of us, cutting through the water like a pond skater, and due to the size of the other great ships, ours may as well be one in comparison.

We catch up to the fleet quickly, their vessels splitting the water into white tracks that smash against the sides of the others around them. The island we are meant to travel to, _ Isla de la Fuente _ , or more correctly,  _ Aguey-Cairi _ , which is what the Taino call it -- or at least, that’s what they called it when they still inhabited it -- now sat deserted about a day’s sail from where Shipwreck Island had been. 

I climb the mast to the crow’s nest to watch the rear as more of our allies join us. The macaw that had perched above decides to rest on my shoulder, and I muse for a moment that I truly had become the pirate I had wanted to become since my youth, and I cannot help but grin as I glance through the spyglass, the wind causing my hair to dance around my face. I lean against the top of the crow’s nest and simply watch for a moment, feeling at peace. 

Then I find my eyes wandering down to the deck where I see Victor leaning back against the wall of the quarterdeck, face raised in my direction. I wonder if he can see my face from down there before he approaches the rope ladder that I know has terrified him to the point of paralysis many times, and he begins his ascent. How curious…

He takes his time, clawing at the rope with bruising force and making the conscious effort not to look down, until he finally peers over the top of the crow’s nest, making his way up on shaky legs. 

“You didn’t have to come up here if it scares you, you know,” I say, resting my hand on his face and sighing as I look into his eyes.

“I wanted to see you,” he says, wrapping his arms around me.

“Don’t look down, just look at me…” I say in an attempt to reassure him.

Gritting his teeth, he complies, and I can feel him relax a bit under my touch, his rigid body becoming more pliant as he focuses his gaze on me. He chuckles. “I wonder if there is something you are incapable of doing because so far, you seem competent at essentially everything.”

“Not  _ everything, _ ” I say, rolling my eyes. “Just most things. Oh. Like running. You always beat me when we race.”

“That does not count,” he replies, and I can see his pupils wandering behind me, so I steady his face in my hands. “You even bested me at swords the other day. And you also seem like you do not fear anything. Somehow you know exactly what to do to console me, and to make me do what I normally would never think to do… because of my own fears. I want you to know how much I admire you.”

My face heats up, and I want to look away, but now Victor’s hand is on my chin, and I have no choice but to keep my eyes on him. He reminds me everyday of how tender his heart truly is. I listen to the sped up pace of my own heart mixed with the sound of hundreds of ships advancing through the sea, but all I can hone in on is Victor peering through me. 

“Thank you,” I say, “I admire you so much, too. You know, I keep thinking about when we were on Shipwreck Island before, and when you embraced me on the beach… I felt something, Victor. And I’ve… never had someone show me so much unconditional affection, support and care. I know I say this a lot but you are a good man, Victor. And I’m proud to be yours. Truly.”

“As am I,” he says, a ghost of a smile attached to his lips as he presses our foreheads together. My eyes flutter closed. “And I must say that it is actually… quite pleasant up here. So long as I keep my eyes above sea-level. Although I will say that I prefer the view right before me.”

“I feel your hands wandering,” I say, opening one of my eyes and peeking at him. “ _ Mercy _ .”

As I expect, he removes his hands from my backside and says “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’m just… Not sure how good an idea it would be to do anything up here with literally every pirate on the sea being able to watch.”

“The fact that you think I would be able to do anything up here without losing consciousness and falling into the sea makes me wonder if you know me at all,” he teases. “Although I may need your help getting down.”

“You know I would jump into the water to save you even though I’m afraid of open water,” I say before I press my lips to Victor’s again, wrapping my arms around him and feeling him pull me against him, cradling me to his heart.

“Please… do not do that,” he says, shaking his head. “All right. I want to get down now.”

“Perhaps I know a way to motivate you…” I say, feeling my lip curl up on one side against my will. “Why don’t we finish what we started before we got interrupted?”

Victor’s eyes seem to sparkle as soon as I say this, and he smooths down my hair before hesitantly moving to the ladder. He asks: “Will you climb beside me?”

“Of course. We can take our time… Just go slow and keep your eyes on me. And if you want, you can tell me about all the things you want to do to me…” I say, wiggling my eyebrows as I slide onto the ladder next to him and begin climbing down. He swallows as he steps down a rung.

“What if I want to keep it as a surprise?” he says quietly, face reddening as his gaze falters again. I point to my face to draw his attention back to me.

“Eyes up here, love,” I say, before adding with a pout, “it’s a bit of a shame you won’t tell me, though. Or do you think someone’s going to hear us?  _ Or  _ do you want me to tell you what I’ve been waiting for six days for you to do to me?”

“Yes, that would be… better,” he says quickly.

“Well, too bad. We’re already on the ground,” I say as my foot taps against the wood of the deck. 

“Oh.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“Such a tease,” he whispers in my ear as he grabs my behind, and I can feel the sensation go straight to my groin. I glance around, my face reddening as I wonder if anyone else can see us.

“Yeah, yeah, go have a break you two, I know you’re about to start fucking each other anyway. Just stay out of the kitchen this time,” Lake calls from the helm with a click of her tongue. 

“Thank you,” Victor breathes, taking me to the lower deck by the hand. 

I can feel my limbs tingling as he pulls me through the door to his room, before kissing the breath from my lungs. After a moment, we separate for air, and my eyelids flutter open ever so slightly, my lips parted as he rubs circles on my cheek. I can feel any urges to resist slipping away as I lean into his touch. 

“You really helped me today,” Victor says quietly, as if speaking any louder would disturb him from what I know he is about to do. “I want to give you… a reward.”

“It was my pleasure, Sir,” I say, nuzzling against his hand. “What sort of reward did you have in mind?”

“How about you tell me what you want?”

“Asking me to think and make decisions isn’t one of your best moves,” I say as I raise my chin, grinning and feigning haughtiness, before I add in a more level voice, breaking character for but a moment with a wink: “It helps to give me options. But also, feel free to smack me around if you want to.”

“All right, then.”

Victor chuckles, running his fingers along my jawline to my chin before he raises his hand, and in that instant, I can feel my pulse quicken and adrenaline burst through my veins. The first slap is soft, experimental, and my lip curls up on impact. When he smacks me a second time, using the back of his hand, I can feel the tears stinging at the corners of my eyes. The third slap echoes and leaves me reeling as my vision becomes distorted, but when I blink, the tears recede. I can feel my trousers getting painfully tight.

“Thank you, Sir,” I say, glancing at him through my eyelashes. “Now… are you finally going to make me cry?” 

“Perhaps,” he says, as he shoves me to my knees. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and supporting once again. Did you expect that development? Also, I will say, I do really enjoy writing the spicy scenes between Venji eheh. Good news is I have a few more chapters to write for this project but hopefully I'll finish it by the end of the month in honor of NaNo and will get everything posted up soon. . Anyway, onto Victor's POV...


	24. Victor Salazar - 5 June, 1787; Isla de la Fuente/Aguey-Cairi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Brethren Court convenes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The hat goes around the table until it is full to the brim and even then, I watch as hands of many shades continue to add their hand hooks and rabbit’s feet and thimbles until I see a young woman with long, dark hair, a wide-brimmed black hat with a small skeleton wrapped around the crown and skin the same color as mine remove a dark silver ring with a blood-red stone set into it from her finger and place it into the hat atop the pile of objects. 

We arrive off the coast of _Aguey-Cairi_ and join the hundreds of other ships in surrounding the island from afar, as approaching any closer will result in running ashore or colliding with the reef, both of which are disagreeable options. The pristine white sand of the beach beckons us from afar, and Lake charges Andrew and Felix with looking after the ship as I, Benji and Lake sail out to the island via dinghy. 

I inquire why Lake has chosen to take us, the two newest crew members, and not her trusted navigator and chef, but she explains that they are not built for politics. This could make me laugh if I were not so tense, but Benji smiles at me gently as we row through the warm greenish-blue water to where thousands of our allies of the Brethren Court gather.

The gathered crowds representing pirates of all countries and creeds, from India, Singapore, South America, West Africa, the Caribbean and the European empires, and many others. Even in San Juan, where we have a society of people descended from the Taino and the Spanish, as well as those who had been stolen from the African continent, I had never seen so many different cultures in one place, uniting for a single purpose without the necessity for violence.

As is customary for the Brethren Court’s gatherings, we cast our swords aside, leaving them behind in our boat before we trek to a covered pavilion with a teak-and-palm roof that puts the hall at Shipwreck Cove to shame. With a compressed sand floor that does not move when walked upon and a giant round teak table in the center, I wonder what purpose it could have served to its original inhabitants, who had been slaughtered or perhaps forcefully removed, never to set foot on their own land again. In the background, huts made from bamboo and covered with thatch line the small hills and the beach leading up to the jungle. 

Lake sits at the table, and Benji and I stand behind her, watching as a hat filled with an assortment of items, including but not limited to a glass eye, a piece of paper with “1720” on it, an engraved compass, a human tooth, and a colorful wooden egg, among many others, and labeled “pieces of eight” comes around the table. When Lake receives it, she pulls off Calypso’s mark and places it in before passing it to the Pirate Lord beside her. My eyes watch the hat as others add more items to it, but something about the compass piques my interest. 

The hat goes around the table until it is full to the brim and even then, I watch as hands of many shades continue to add their hand hooks and rabbit’s feet and thimbles until I see a young woman with long, dark hair, a wide-brimmed black hat with a small skeleton wrapped around the crown and skin the same color as mine remove a dark silver ring with a blood-red stone set into it from her finger and place it into the hat atop the pile of objects. 

That ring looks familiar... I squint at her through my spectacles and she raises her gaze to me. For a moment we stare at each other and a moment later, recognition dawns on her face. 

“ _Victor_!” she calls, glancing around the mass of bodies for a way around, before she pushes her chair away and all but throws herself across the table.

When she leaps from atop it she almost falls into my arms as she wraps herself around my middle tightly, her hat smacking me in the face. All around us, unintelligible murmurs drift through the air, but we ignore them.

“ _Pilar… I was not expecting to see you here,_ ” I say in Spanish, holding her close to me. The tears prick at the corners of my eyes as I sigh as my heart swells to the point where I fear it will erupt from my rib cage. 

“ _And I wasn’t expecting to see_ _you_ _here, either, brother_ ,” she replies in the same tongue, as she pulls away and looks up at me with the widest smile I have ever seen grace her lips. “ _And stop crying because I will cry, too, and I don’t need my crew to see that_.” 

Regardless, she wipes her eyes in her sleeve and sniffles. Behind me, I hear someone clear their throat. I turn to see Benji with his arms crossed over his chest, head tipped to the side with a raised eyebrow. Cursing to myself for forgetting where I am, I drape my arm over Benji’s shoulder with a smile and guide him over to Pilar, who eyes him suspiciously. 

“I have been extremely rude,” I say in English this time, “Pilar, this is Benjamin, my… and this may come as a shock to you, but he and I are… lovers.”

Her eyes widen and her mouth drops open as she offers him her hand, which Benji takes; he kisses the back of it with a soft smile. 

“It’s good to finally meet you,” Benji says, lacing his fingers with the hand I have wrapped around his shoulder. “Call me Benji. I don’t much care for the name my father gave me… but anyway, I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“And _I’m_ Captain Lake Meriwether, at your service,” Lake says, shoving Benji and I aside and offering her hand to Pilar. “I love your hat. It makes me want to murder someone.”

Pilar looks her up and down and takes her hand with a forced smile. She then turns to me and speaks in Spanish again. “ _Now I understand everything…_ _That’s why you never chased any girls around… Is that why you went to the monastery? To recuse yourself?”_

“We should speak in a language we all understand,” I say before I swallow, my gaze moving down to the ground. While I have always been close with Pilar, perhaps this news has shocked her and I find it difficult to look her in the eyes, her stare seeming to repel me like a wounded animal repels its pack members from it. “And yes. I did not chase after women because there is nothing about them that attracts me. That is something you must accept.”

She laughs. “Do you think I have a problem with that? Look at me. I am among _pirates,_ I have no reason to judge you, brother. And besides, you and I are the same. My choices were to go to the convent or marry a man; I chose neither. And now I am a Pirate Lord. The only place a woman who loves women can have any power in this world is at sea. And the same can be said of a man who loves men. I am happy you learned that lesson, brother.”

I exhale the breath I did not know I had been holding when she says this. In the three years we had not seen each other, I did not expect for my younger sister to surpass me to such great heights. But my heart still swells with pride; she is no longer a young girl of fifteen, but a woman grown who commands her own crew and the respect of those around her. Had I been a younger, more naïve man I would fear for her; but I know that there is no place she deserves to be, nay, where she _belongs_ , than standing at the mast of her ship and advancing, always forward. 

“Thank you,” I say, resting my hand on her shoulder and squeezing it. “And I am _so_ proud of you. I have never seen a woman more suited for her role. _Captain Pilar Salazar…_ It truly rolls off the tongue.”

With a roll of her eyes, she hugs me again before she says: “No need to flatter me. I would help you get a ship and your own crew without all that, you know.”

“You can do that?” Benji asks, and as I turn to him I see his eyes alight, as if she had offered him the treasure of El Dorado, risk-free. 

“There is no way I would be suited to that,” I say.

“Nonsense,” Benji says quickly, “of _course_ you’re suited to it. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Listen to your colonizer of a lover and have more faith in yourself, brother,” Pilar says.

“Colonizer?” Benji asks, crossing his arms over his chest as he thinks. “Hmm… I suppose that’s a fair assessment…” 

“At least this one is self aware,” Pilar says. “Anyway... I can teach you if I must but it will come to you naturally as it did to me. Our uncle may have been a pirate hunter but the skill of captaining runs in our blood. Although, I do not know what to say about your lover…”

“We are a pair and as such, we would captain together,” I say decisively, pulling Benji closer to me. From the corner of my eye, I can see him biting his lip to suppress a smile.

“And once you two have your ship, you shall become matelots,” Pilar says.

“Aye. It has… been discussed,” I say.

“Good, good…” Pilar says, pupils darting between Benji and I, and a smile blooms on her face again but it does not reach her eyes. “You two should head the parley, then. A successful parley means your names will be known and you will more easily secure a ship. Let’s begin, savvy?”

Pilar leaves us, taking her place at the only remaining empty spot at the round table and she stands to address the crowd. I blink. The chatter continues, and she stands there like her namesake, and like a mountain in a range, among other mountains of similar or even taller height, but none of them as jagged and dark and able to pierce the landscape with a bolt of lightning. 

And a crack of thunder echoes through the pavilion as Pilar stands with her hand raised, smoking revolver grasped firmly, and above her a keyhole to the heavens opens up. Finally all falls silent, and she speaks.

“Ahoy, mateys. We have gathered you all here for the Fifth Brethren Court. I am sure you all are aware of the maelstrom that has opened up where Shipwreck Island used to be, and how much of a threat that poses to all of us who traverse Calypso’s seas… But the goddess is angry again. The only way to stop her is to bind her in human form as the Brethren Court of old had done, as much as it pains me to say.”

Around the pavilion, murmurs of assent filter through the air. I can feel my blood boiling immediately; how could she make such a suggestion? Did she not know about the legends of Calypso and Davy Jones? 

“ _No,_ ” I say, pushing to the front of the crowd so I can be at the table. “That is not the way.”

I can feel the eyes of the Pirate Lords on me; Lake rests her hand on top of mine and shakes her head, but I do not falter. 

“Do you have a better suggestion?” Pilar asks me, leaning forward with her hands flat on the table.

“In fact, I do,” I say. “Our captain, Mia Brooks, is on her way now to Calypso’s realm to return the body of Davy Jones to her. Once she does, the maelstrom should close, and the sea will be peaceful again.”

More whispers surround me, and I feel Benji pressing against my arm; I look at him from the corner of my eye, and he does the same, nodding just enough that only I can see. 

“Don’t make promises we don’t know if we can keep,” Lake hisses, digging her nails into my wrist. 

“Is this true?” another Pirate Lord, a small man with a long, skinny beard and a high voice, dressed in fine silks, says. 

“Aye. It is,” I say. 

“How do you know?” says a tall woman with a knot on her head and a cape made of a lion’s pelt.

“All we can do is wait to see the result but I trust my captain’s word. I know she is the most fearless and determined woman I know next to my sister, Captain Pilar Salazar, and Captain Lake Meriwether of the _Rainbow Horizon,”_ I say.

Pilar seems satisfied with this, but when the chatter erupts again, she slams her fist down on the table. “ _Enough!_ I can vouch for my brother’s words. He is a man too honest to be a pirate and yet, here he is. We will wait three days for the maelstrom to subside. Now, onto our other pressing matters...“

She explains the increased suppression of piracy by both the British Navy and the British East India Company especially through their use of privateers, and I clench my fist when I think of the band that set fire to the _Horizon,_ as well as the bastards aboard the _Kraken’s Spear._ I look beside me to Benji, whose eyebrows press together as if they are at war with one another, the same way he looks at me when I make him wait a bit longer than he would like before I give him what he wants. It makes me realize that I would battle every man on that ship for him. 

“We must parley with our foes,” Pilar says, looking to me, “and knowing what we know about the maelstrom, we have a great deal of leverage. We can use this to our advantage and avoid ceding more territory. Those bloody kingsmen all know that maelstrom has been horrible for business and we all know what they will do for coin.”

“I know my way around negotiating with Englishmen,” Benji says, setting his hat down on the table. I stare at him with wide eyes. “Some of them may even recognize me. Let me parley with them.”

Placing my hand on his shoulder and squeezing, I turn to those gathered around the table and say: “Let me and the rest of the _Rainbow Horizon_ go as well. We are one of the smallest and fastest ships; the British will be quick to underestimate us. And since we are responsible for the maelstrom, it is only right for us to be responsible for the parley.”

Pilar nods without listening to the chatter around her. “I will vouch for the _Rainbow Horizon_ to parley successfully and I will accompany as mediator. Does anyone object?”

“I object!” says a tall blond man with a tattoo of a tiger that stretches up his side and to his face. 

With a sigh, Pilar picks up her revolver and shoots him. She aims for his chest but it goes through his skull with a sickening _crack_ as his bones shatter, sending a fountain of blood a few feet in all directions. I gulp.

“Anyone else?” Pilar asks, brandishing her gun at everyone in the vicinity. 

This time, no one says anything. 

“All right… parley time.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed this chapter because I had a lot of fun writing it and it was interesting to learn about pirate politics and such. And I really loved introducing and writing Pilar, she is fun and a bit ruthless but so interesting imo. She was only supposed to come in for a moment but she will show up in later chapters too as an ally to Venji because I just love her so much lol. Anyway, I'm looking forward to hearing what you thought of Pilar and of the chapter. Also, a heads up for the next chapter, it is... extremely spicy. Just to let you know in advance. Anyway, see you in the next installment and thank you again for reading and supporting!


	25. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 8 June, 1787; Isla de la Fuente/Aguey-Cairi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benji gets high.
> 
> (This is the spiciest chapter of the story and has not-super-explicit depictions of bdsm and subspace in particular so proceed with caution... you have been warned...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “We should take a break,” I say, before eyeing his lap for a moment; he pulls me onto him, cradling me against his thin frame. 
> 
> “Are we not doing so already?” he asks, running his hand up my side as he kisses the top of my head.
> 
> “You know that’s not the type of break I meant,” I say, wiggling in my spot on his knee.

Pilar joins us on the _Rainbow Horizon_ for the journey, which is about a three-days sail to a deserted island where the British have agreed to parley with us; she is accompanied by her little brown, curly-haired dog called Artemisia. Her ship, _Sappho’s Victory_ , trails us from afar, a beast ten times the size of the _Horizon_ and as such, a potent threat to anyone it may cross. And lucky for us, it is on our side. 

With a fond half-grin, Pilar watches as Artemisia scampers around the deck in search of entertainment, until Felix arrives with Jack perched on his shoulder, and the monkey screeches before leaping down to the deck and holding out a tiny paw to pet her. When Artemisia wags her tail like and barks, bowing before she lunges at him playfully, Jack seems to do a little dance. And thus, the two become friends, with Artemisia wanting nothing more than to tussle, and Jack alternating between trying to pat her and hissing at her as she runs in circles around him.

I sit beside Victor on the deck with my legs crossed and my head on his shoulder as Artemisia approaches us, stepping gingerly on Victor’s knee before she stands on all fours on his lap, her head barely reaching his shoulder even when she stands on two legs. 

He smiles softly, giving her a scratch behind the ears and under the chin as she nuzzles against his hand, and I watch as he picks her up under her two front legs like a tiny human, and lets her back legs hang before he brings her to his face so that she can lick at his cheeks, holding her little body to his chest gently. I cannot help but chuckle at that, and Victor giggles beside me as he closes his eyes so tightly they crinkle like bunched up parchment squeezed between one’s fingers. The image is so endearing that I cannot help but commit it to memory.

Victor sets Artemisia down on the deck again, and she makes a circle before she lies down next to where our knees touch, showing us her belly; I reach out to stroke her soft fur, and Victor mirrors me, our hands brushing against each other with each motion. After a few minutes of this, along with the sidelong glances I can feel coming from beside me, Artemisia rolls back onto her front and stands, bounding over to where Jack had taken hold of the rope ladder in an attempt to climb up to the crow’s nest. She gives him a bark, a small, high-pitched and yappy utterance, pawing at the ladder because he is just out of her reach. 

With a sigh, I close my eyes and rest my head on Victor’s shoulder again, leaning into him as he drapes an arm across my shoulder and rests the other hand on my leg. I can see the shadow over his visage and I imagine I have one over my own, too. For a moment, I simply observe as Artemisia skitters around the deck, before I turn my attention to Victor again, cupping his face so he looks at me. 

“We should take a break,” I say, before eyeing his lap for a moment; he pulls me onto him, cradling me against his thin frame. 

“Are we not doing so already?” he asks, running his hand up my side as he kisses the top of my head.

“You know that’s not the type of break I meant,” I say, wiggling in my spot on his knee.

He chuckles. I watch as he raises his gaze, glances around quickly, then sneaks his hand up the back of my shirt, his skin hot enough to leave a brand where it touches. And if he were to leave a mark behind, I would be proud to wear it anyway, because it would be given to me by a good man, a man who is worthy of me.

“It seems that little Artemisia gives us enough of a distraction already,” Victor says, staring off into the distance. 

“I can’t tell who’s cuter, you or her,” I tease him.

Feigning hurt, Victor scoffs. “I find it offensive that you would ever compare me to such a majestic creature. Look at her go. There is no way I can compete with that. She is a perfect specimen in every way _and_ an angel.”

I burst out laughing, shaking my head as I clutch at his chest, then I wipe the corners of my eyes in my sleeves before I say: “All right, we get it, _Sir_ , you love dogs. Just accept the compliment; I was trying to tell you that you’re cute.”

“Well _you_ are much cuter,” he says, kissing my forehead. 

“Your criteria for rating cuteness seems… skewed,” I say with a grin.

“Then perhaps we _should_ ‘take a break’, as you put it, so I can show you just how cute I think you are,” Victor says, glancing up to the quarterdeck where Pilar stood leaning over the railing and peering down at us, an expression between a glare and a grin hanging on her facial muscles. 

While Victor phrases it more as a request than an order, I know that he is still in the state of politeness that dictates he is too nice to tell me properly. Perhaps I can push him a bit further, grate at his psyche a bit more like a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble to reveal the figure within. 

As I rise to my feet and offer a hand to Victor, I watch Pilar as she focuses on me like a raptor circling its prey with the intent to swoop down and pluck a fish from the water and gobble it up mid-flight. I wonder what I could have done to her to make her so displeased with me, and I gulp. What I want more than anything is to forget about the parley, and I want for Victor to take his mind off it, too. 

Pilar watches us as we go to the lower deck, and my eyes watch the nonexistent movement for a moment before I turn away, wrapping my arms around Victor’s bicep as he leads me below. 

“Is your sister always that… _intense_?” I ask him when we are in a place where we will not be overheard.

Victor shakes his head. “Her problem is either the fact that you are English or simply that you are mine.”

We stop before the door to my room and I raise my eyebrow at him. “Is she… jealous or something?”

“No… It is more so that she has unreasonably high expectations of most people. But she will accept you. It may not be instantaneous but it will occur. At… some point,” Victor says. “She struggles with changes but once she moves beyond them, she is an invaluable ally.”

“Oh, I can see that,” I say, unlocking the door. “I hope to be on her good side one day, then.”

“Enough about my sister,” Victor says as he closes the door behind us. When the lock clicks, I instantly feel as if I am being examined in a way that makes me wonder if I hadn’t entered a steam room instead. “Now it is just you… and I.”

“How do you want me, Sir?” I ask as I shrug off my jacket. When I go to undo my shirt, his hand shoots out and grabs my wrist, pulling it away.

“I want you just as you are, _mi amor_. Let me,” he says, untying my shirt himself as I let my arms dangle. 

He undresses me slowly, savoring the control I’ve allowed him to have over me, and I watch his eyes as he removes each article of clothing. My eyes flutter closed, and I surrender into his touch because I trust him more than I’ve trusted anyone else in my life. My brain deposits all my worries somewhere else and all I can focus on is Victor. 

After he ties me to the bed as he sees fit and blindfolds me, he begins to tease me. And tease me. Until my blindfold is saturated with the salt of my tears.

“What number are we on?” he asks me, and I can feel him tugging at my hair, but the sensation begins to fade a bit, the pain starting to numb as if I have been held in the ice for too long.

“S-seven, Sir,” I say, trying to keep my voice level as another wave of pleasure and frustration washes over me. My skin feels like I’ve rolled in a bath of molten lava. “I c-can’t take it anymore… _please,_ Sir…”

“You can say ‘mercy’, and I will stop,” he reassures me.

“I-I’m aware,” I say through gritted teeth. But I won’t.

“So you _can_ take it.”

“N-no…” I whine, squirming against my restraints. 

“I know you can do it,” he says with a sigh, before he twists his fingers, touching that spot inside me that pushes me closer to the edge of my release and causes me to shudder before slowing down and letting it fade once again. “You need to have more faith in yourself.”

As much as I would like to strangle him right now if I could get my hands on him, I don’t want him to stop -- and I know I can always stop him. And so as much as it hurts to hold myself in the same position for -- how long has it been already? -- with my muscles howling in agony and shaking as Victor spreads my knees farther apart because they’re starting to drop back together and _god_ it hurts so good when he smacks me so I correct myself for him -- I can only continue to allow him to have his way with me even as I grit my teeth through the twisting of his damn fingers and the hotness of his mouth on me and the tears that won’t stop slipping out of my eyes, uninvited but welcome guests to this filthy soiree. But I don’t want to disappoint him. My one saving grace is the fact that I cannot see his face, and this liberates me from the scrutiny and oppression of his gaze. 

His lips curl up against my skin and I can tell he’s taking a great deal of pleasure in this when he asks me: “What number was that?”

“Eight, Sir,” I say, letting my head fall back against the pillow as he touches me more, my body beginning to tingle, tiny pinpricks, an army of ants making their way across my flesh.

“Good boy, _mi amor,_ ” he says, and I can hear the smile in his voice. 

Even as I feel myself slip away, the sensations still apparent but much lighter somehow, I cannot help the glowing warmth that floods my heart that accompanies his praise. I begin to float, and the perpetual clicking of the passage of time has stopped; all that exists in this peaceful realm of rainbow euphoria, are Victor and I. The frustration I had felt before melts away, sloughing off me like a moulted exoskeleton, and I imagine not even the world’s best opium could compare. And every stroke induces an even higher state of lightness as my body lays suspended in nothingness, free from the bonds of material reality.

Victor presses his mouth against mine and swallows my moans as he touches me, the sensation of almost reaching my peak arriving again before he takes his hand away and allows it to pass. But in my hazy state, all I can do is giggle when he pulls away.

“What number was that one?” he asks, as he strokes my cheek, and I lean into the touch.

“Mm… nine, Sir,” I say, before I feel him sit between my legs. 

“You know what that means…” he whispers in my ear, and I giggle again. 

“Are you going to put it in me?” I ask, my head lolling to the side.

“Aye… and then I will bring you back to me,” he says as I listen to him undo his trousers. 

It’s an entirely different sensation from his fingers but no less pleasurable as he presses into me, my head feeling light yet heavy at the same time as I allow it to fall back. Victor kisses down my neck, and I giggle because it _tickles_ and soon he finds release, and I find mine, and the mist of euphoria thickens and all I can think of is _Victor, Victor, Victor…_

And in that moment, the veil lifts, the cloud dissipating, and I drop back to earth, back to bed, back to the to and fro of the ship, back to my hands tied above my head, back to the smell of sweat and sex, back to the stickiness between my legs, and back to the tears spilling from my eyes for an entirely different reason -- and I don’t know why. 

Victor sighs as he undoes my restraints and removes my blindfold before he lies down beside me, taking me into his arms as I’m forced to _think_ again, and all I see are the bloody bodies of the people I’ve killed, the images I suppressed that for some reason have returned to the tableau of my mind. I cannot stop the shaking and the piercing haranguing of hunger wracking my insides as my body refuses to cooperate with me, and all I can do is cry as Victor holds me tightly against his chest, petting my hair and kissing my forehead and whispering, over and over:

“You did so well, I am so proud of you, _I love you._ ”

I cry harder at these words and all I can say is with a shaky breath is:

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading once again. And thank you once again to [temporarylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarylove/pseuds/temporarylove) for continuously acting as my sensitivity reader, you the real MVP. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the chapter. It was a little self indulgent because I wanted to write Venji petting a dog bc it's cute and then also I wanted to write some bdsm/power play between them because I find their power dynamics to be interesting, especially in terms of D/s. I think a lot of my goal w this is to sorta course correct the perception people have of bdsm and kink in general, which often doesn't take into account how much communication and trust is involved with the process. 
> 
> Also, I will probably get some questions on what B is experiencing in this and I wanted to write a little note to explain. Essentially what he's experiencing is colloquially called 'subspace' (also in more clinical terms known as 'transient hypofrontality' which essentially means that you enter an altered mental state where you feel like you're floating/high/really peaceful, as well as a reduction in the sensation of pain, and you also lose track of time. It also means people in this state can become more easily suggestible which means it's important for whoever they're with to essentially keep an eye on them and take care of them.) It's something that you can reach through different methods utilizing bdsm if you're someone who's into being dominated/a bottom either through the use of pain or basically any other methods of domination that you agree on w your partner ofc (that bit is important!) However, this is also apparently something you can reach through other methods like running for instance and it's what produces the 'runner's high'. 
> 
> In the case of bdsm, though, due to the intensity of scenes, coming down from subspace can mean you experience something called 'sub drop' which is when your body has to deal with essentially coming back to the real world and can be accompanied with very strong emotions and it's also why things like aftercare are super important (in a lot of cases this means cuddling and talking but as with anything, it varies by person). Similar phenomena happen to doms/tops, except they experience a state that's called 'top space' or more clinically 'flow', which is a state in which you become more focused and attentive, loss of self-consciousness and optimal performance of tasks, as well as losing track of time. Leaving this state is also accompanied by a 'drop' which can mean you experience a downward fall of your emotional state as your body regulates itself. If you're interested in more of the psychology behind bsdm there are a lot of resources online such as [this one](https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-wide-wide-world-psychology/201502/the-surprising-psychology-bdsm). Anyway, hope you enjoyed this very long-winded explanation. Now onto Vic's POV!


	26. Victor Salazar - 8 June, 1787; Somewhere in the Caribbean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor and Benji share a meal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Did you sleep well, mi amor?” I ask him as I lean back and stretch as well. 
> 
> “No thanks to you,” he teases, reaching out to rest his hand on my knee. I take it in my own and kiss it.
> 
> “Well, I brought you some bread,” I say, waiting for him to sit up before I pass him the loaf, which he stares at with a raised eyebrow. I pass him a glass and say: “And you should drink water, you do not get enough fluids.”

As I watch Benji’s face finally relax, the lines of worry erased, I realize that I have never felt so close to someone in my life as I do at this moment. To have him trust me so completely and to devote himself to me makes me wonder what I did to deserve it. And as his breath evens and he clings to me in his sleep, I realize that despite my aversion to death, if anyone should want to lay a hand on him, I would not hesitate to end their life. I thought I understood what people mean when they say they would die for another and yet to say that one would kill for another was always an idea I could never conceptualize, always foreign like the sensation of being enveloped by a new coat that does not fit quite right. Yet now I know how it feels; but only for him -- it is always only for him.

I stroke the top of his cheek gently, wiping away the tears that still hold onto his eyelashes like little glass jellyfish with their legs wrapped around branches. He looks so ethereal that I would feel like I am committing a crime if I were to rouse him from his slumber. And I cannot stop my own eyes from watering as I stare at him, the exhaustion overcoming me at the exact moment that I realize how deeply I have fallen in love with Benji. My heart clenches and my rib cage threatens to collapse on itself as I still myself so the quaking from my sobs does not cause too much of a disturbance. When I see that Benji does not stir, I exhale relief. 

Sighing, I sniffle quietly and dry my face, my lips curling up in a smile. There is no place I would rather be at this moment, but it would do us well to clean up before we parley. My pulse quickens instantly, becoming so loud I fear it will wake Benji, but he remains still. 

_Shit_ … I had almost forgotten. When Benji and I are in the midst of our lovemaking sessions, I always lose track of the time. I glance out the window to see the sun still high overhead, which means we still have a good deal of time. But the gnawing in my stomach is beginning to feel unbearable. The gnawing… does that mean…?

In an attempt to make as little commotion as possible, I slowly slide my free hand down my body to my belt, eyes darting to Benji every so often, as I withdraw my dagger. I remove my hand from Benji’s shoulder hair’s-length by hair’s-length and hold it over his face as I plunge the dagger into my hand.

“ _Jesus Christ_ !” I all but shout, simultaneously praying that I had not stabbed myself directly in my right hand so I can still hold a sword but _god make it stop_ it hurts just as much as… getting stabbed would. My eyelids clench together tightly as I feel the sting at the corners of my eyes for an entirely different reason now, my body rigid from pain.

I remove the blade from my hand, wanting to vomit from the sight of the liquid so red it almost looks black that slithers from my veins, sending a pulsating shockwave up my arm. Through all this, Benji still sleeps, and that is the only fact that brings me relief, even as a puddle of blood falls onto his face. What a fool I am. 

As I attempt to keep myself from panicking further, I dab at the blood with my sleeve as I set the blade down beside me with a shaky hand. There is… so much blood… I gulp as I rip off part of my sleeve and wrap it tightly around my palm. And finally Benji stirs. 

_No no no no no…_

After I tie off the knot, my white shirt splattered red, I begin stroking Benji’s hair again in an attempt to coax him back to sleep, but I fail. He opens his eyes into slits, peering ahead before he rubs the sleep from his eyes. 

“It smells like blood,” he says softly, before he goes quiet. 

Benji’s gaze lands on my chest and he sits up quickly, almost falling off the bed before I catch him with my left hand, and I wince as the pain shoots up my arm. 

“Shh… Benji, it is all right,” I say, sitting up and pulling him back to me. “I… was testing to see if the curse had been broken and… look,” I show him the blood-soaked piece of shirt around my palm, “It has been lifted.”

Shaking his head and pressing his hand against it, Benji groans, his voice hoarse. “And your way of testing it was stabbing yourself in the hand? God, I don’t have the energy for this right now… Even _worse_ , I’m fucking starving.”

“Are you not… pleased about that?” I ask, rubbing his back with my good hand as he sits beside me on the bed, squinting from the light shining in through the window.

“I mean… I _am_ , but I don’t appreciate being woken up to see you mutilating yourself,” he says with a pointed glare. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need more sleep if I’m meant to be any good for when we parley. Try not to stab yourself again while I’m asleep.”

With that, Benji lies back with his head on my lap and closes his eyes, sighing loudly. I still have most of my clothes on, and there is something a bit uncomfortable at this moment about Benji lying on me, entirely bare. 

“Why are you lying on my lap if you are clearly upset with me?” I ask, brushing his hair from his face and stroking his cheek.

He opens one eye, staring up at me before he says: “I can find you incredibly annoying right now but still want to be close to you. Just let me sleep.”

“Will you be all right if I go get us some food?” I say as I slide out from under him, gently placing his head on the mattress.

“Given the fact that I’m not in any state to be walking around, go ahead,” he says, wrapping the sheets around his form. 

I check myself in the mirror, throwing on my vest and buttoning it to cover the massive bloodstain I had earned thanks to my own handiwork, and adjusting my hair as I put my hat back on. After I sort my appearance, ensuring no one would be able to tell what Benji and I had been up to despite it being obvious to anyone and their mothers, I listen to the sound of Benji’s steady breathing for a moment, watching his cherubic sleeping face before I lean down to kiss him on the cheek. 

When I retreat from Benji’s room, I realize that the month’s-worth of hunger makes my insides feel as if they want to rip themselves out of me and hang themselves from a gibbet, and this spurns my feet to walk me to the kitchen faster.

“The curse is broken,” I announce, “do we have _any_ edible food left on this ship that has not spoiled or gotten soggy?”

But I could not have been prepared for the image of Felix, Andrew and Lake all in the throes of shoveling pieces of fresh bread into their mouths as if their stomachs were abysses, their hands of cards strewn across the table, their game of rummy forgotten.

“Yeah, we _know_ ,” Lake says before she takes another huge bite of bread, tearing it apart with her teeth.

“Here,” Felix says through a mouthful of food as he throws a loaf of bread at me and I catch it with a raised eyebrow. 

“Thank… you?” I say, tearing off a piece and putting it in my mouth, chewing quickly, and swallowing before I say: “You should probably slow down.”

They do not seem to pay me any mind as they continue their meals, and I nibble at the bread despite the strong desire I, too, have to gorge on it instead. But I restrain myself as I take another loaf under my arm, undoubtedly from the grain Felix had managed to keep in a sealed metal barrel to prevent it from becoming waterlogged like the rest of our food. I take a jug of water and some glasses, as well, and return to Benji’s room.

I sit down at Benji’s desk and tear small pieces of bread from the loaf, eating slowly as I sip on some water, staring out the window and watching the seagulls and the clouds fly by. My gaze drifts to Benji, his shoulder rising and falling with each breath, and I watch him for a long time, losing track of my surroundings and the time once again as I pass my eyes over every point on his form several times, memorizing the shape and angle of his nose, the curves of his arm muscles, the size of his hands which dwarfed when compared to mine. I lean forward, resting my face in my hand, wishing he would awaken soon so I could kiss him once again. But for now I watch, my eyes drooping as I drift in and out of consciousness.

Soon -- or perhaps, not so soon, I do not know for certain -- Benji’s eyelids flutter open like two Venus flytraps after a meal, and he jumps a bit before rolling his eyes as he lets out a loud, long exhale and stretches, his lip curling up into a grin. 

“Did you sleep well, _mi amor_?” I ask him as I lean back and stretch as well. 

“No thanks to you,” he teases, reaching out to rest his hand on my knee. I take it in my own and kiss it.

“Well, I brought you some bread,” I say, waiting for him to sit up before I pass him the loaf, which he stares at with a raised eyebrow. I pass him a glass and say: “And you should drink water, you do not get enough fluids.”

He snorts before taking a sip, then begins to down the rest of it before he slams the glass down on the desk and I pour him some more. 

“Thank you, Sir,” he says politely, and I feel my face heat up as I watch him take a chunk of bread and chew on it with a devilish grin on his lips. 

“Take your time eating,” I say. 

“I am,” he says.

“If you eat too fast--”

“Relax, _I know_ ,” he insists with a chuckle. “Thank you for taking care of me.”

We chat some more as Benji finishes eating. Then, I help him into his clothes and sit down on the bed, before he wraps himself around my middle, pressing his head against my sternum for a long moment not unlike ivy climbing the outside of an abandoned building. He stares up at me, cupping my cheek as if I were a pearl he discovered within an oyster, a precious jewel that only he can hold. 

“Did you mean it when you said you love me?” he asks me.

“Of course,” I say, liquid gold pooling in my stomach, and he cranes up, pressing his lips to mine, and I lean down to kiss him softly, even though I know he can handle so much more from me, but for now, that is enough. 

When he pulls away, he smooths down my hair and straightens my spectacles, biting his lip as he suppresses a smile. He rises, offering me a hand, and pulls me to my feet, and we return to the upper deck, where Pilar stands overlooking the sea with Artemisia in her arms.

Her gaze rests on mine and Benji’s joined hands and then moves to our faces as our eyes dart away from the other, smiles adorning our lips. She scoffs and turns away; we follow her gaze to the island before us that quickly grows and begins to loom as we approach it. 

“The maelstrom has subsided,” I say.

“How do you know?” Pilar asks.

“I simply do.”

“Let’s hope you’re right… Are you two ready to parley?” she says, before she kisses Artemisia’s little head and sets her down on the deck.

“Aye,” I say.

“Wrong. One is never truly ready to parley. But let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading the next installment of this story! And thank you once again to [temporarylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarylove/pseuds/temporarylove) for her continued sensitivity reading! I hope you enjoyed these next two chapters. I'm currently in the process of writing the final chapter (very close to the end actually) and your comments really help motivate me to finish! So 1 comment = 1 Venji having a good time. Anyway, there are only 2 more installments after this!


	27. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell - 8 June, 1787; Unclaimed Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Benji, Victor, and Pilar parley.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The three men before us burst into laughter for several moments, and all I can do is raise my eyebrow and look at Victor, who mirrors my expression. 
> 
> “Well, I have never heard such ridiculous demands in my life. This is what happens when you negotiate with criminals,” my father says. 
> 
> “Speak for yourself,” Pilar says, “I see three criminals before me and none beside me.”

The sea seems calmer than it has ever been as we approach the parley location, which is an unclaimed island in the eastern corner of the Caribbean, a neutral space for us to negotiate. Felix hugs Victor and I tightly before we leave and ruffles our hair, and something about this makes me uneasy; it’s as if he doesn’t expect us to come back. My insides feel like a leaden weight within me and it makes me drag my feet to the dinghy. Lake pats us on the shoulder and tells us not to die as Pilar straps her gun to her belt and gives Artemisia a teary hug. Perhaps I had underestimated the stakes; I knew it would be stressful, but it almost feels like a funeral.

I take charge of rowing us out to the sandy white patch of land as Victor and Pilar sit beside each other. For a moment, the silence sits heavily between us, an impenetrable iron wall eroded only by the tiny droplets of water splashing from the oars. Pilar watches me, arms crossed over her chest as she scowls. I glance to Victor and then Pilar and then back to Victor and hope understands what I am trying to convey because I know what I am about to say may be… troublesome, to put it lightly. While I despite conflict, I despise not knowing where I stand with people even more. I sigh.

“Pilar,” I say, finally breaking the silence.

Victor jumps, but Pilar does not seem to react, turning her head after so slightly toward me.

“What?” she says bluntly.

“No need to be so rude,” Victor says, shooting Pilar a pointed glare. I mouth a ‘thank you’ at him, and he gives me a soft smile, nodding.

“I don’t know what I’ve done to you to make you not like me, but… Whatever it is, I want to correct it,” I say. 

“If we are meant to be honest, I will say this: I don’t trust you, Benjamin Campbell. It’s nothing personal, but I don’t think I will ever trust the British. Especially you, who are the son of the admiral? What reason do I have to trust you? And what makes you worthy of my brother?” Pilar says, staring me straight in the eyes. If I were a lesser man, perhaps I would be intimidated.

“Look… I know what you mean. Do you think I want to be associated with my own family? I’ve been trying to get away from them my whole life. I know it may be hard to believe, but it’s true,” I reply. “You seemed more than happy for me to become your brother’s mate when we were on _Aguey-Cairi._ What happened?”

“He is right. And that is an excellent question,” Victor says. “I can vouch for him. And I would hope that you of all people, Pilar, would trust in my ability to judge someone’s character. _Especially_ the character of someone I take on as my lover and confidant. Benji is a good man and he is trustworthy.”

“When I learned you two have known each other for such a short period, I became concerned. And perhaps your ability to judge has been impacted by his pretty face, brother,” Pilar says to Victor, and I can see his face redden at this. “We both know you often neglect the words of your brain and think with your--”

“ _Enough_ ,” Victor snaps. “What do you want from him? Benji has done nothing to you but be cordial and you have done nothing but treat him as if he has done something wrong. There is no need to make an enemy of someone who is not. We may come from opposing sides but we all share a common goal now, savvy?”

“You’ve not convinced me,” Pilar says, her face still rigidly downturned.

“In all honesty, I do not need to convince you,” Victor says, “I love you both, and I do not want there to be conflict, either, but Pilar, Benji is clearly making an attempt, and you are not. We are lucky to have found each other again after all these years but you must also make some sort of effort.”

I avert my gaze as my face heats up. Victor rests his hand on my knee and gives it a squeeze. Pilar pauses, eyes darting between Victor and I. Her face softens and she sighs.

“Perhaps I was… too quick to make judgments,” she says quietly, reaching beside her to take Victor’s other hand in her own. “I love you, too, brother. And I suppose I did not realize how strongly you two feel for each other. Although that can also make you a bit stupid.”

“ _Pilar_ ,” Victor warns, “there were many times when Benji could have left my side and betrayed me, but he did not. And I will never betray him, either. If anything, I would more likely be in the position to take advantage of _him_ than he of me.”

“What do you mean?” she asks. 

When I lock eyes with Victor, he nods, and I launch into an explanation, recounting the day we first met aboard the _Kraken’s Spear._ Pilar’s face becomes stony as she listens. And Victor tells the story of how we escaped and joined the crew of the _Rainbow Horizon_. He does not spare any compliments, stressing my loyalty especially, and I cannot help but smile and shake my head.

“You don’t need to defend my honor,” I say, “but thank you. I’ve been interrogated more times than I can count regarding where my loyalties lie, and I always say the same thing: it’s not with the British or with my family. Although, I suppose now I can say my loyalties lie with Victor, too. And by extension, they also lie with you, Pilar.”

Rolling her eyes, Pilar smiles. “You two are very foolish. Which I suppose makes you perfectly compatible.”

“Does that mean we have a truce?” I ask, as we begin to get closer to the island. 

“It appears so,” Pilar says, her face relaxing, the negativity washing off with the words as they float from her lips. “Thank you for being there with my brother through all this. And for taking care of him.”

I press my lips together into a line, my face reddening as I look to Victor, who holds my gaze with his own. It is as if the rest of the world melts away from around us as I say: “Of course. But he’s taken care of me more than I have him. I’m so lucky.”

“The both of you are… too much,” she says with an exasperated sigh, but her words have no bite. “I am pleased you are happy, at least.”

We arrive on the beach, the bottom of the boat scratching against the sand, and we disembark before pulling it inland. Off in the distance, we see figures growing, and we begin our trek toward them. The island is mostly white and empty, more of a glorified sandbar than anything else, and it would most likely disappear under the water in a few years, so it makes sense that no country would lay claim to it. A useless strip of land in the middle of the sea… I rest my hand atop the handle of my cutlass. Once we arrive in the middle of the island, we wait for our foes to arrive. When they do, I gasp.

“Benjamin,” says the low and familiar voice that I haven’t heard in months, from the dark-haired, bespectacled man clad in a blue coat with gold epaulets who stands in between a bearded man who I recognize but cannot place, and another who I have never seen before whose red jacket and red, white and blue insignia indicate he hails from the East India Company.

“Father,” I say, staring him directly in the face, my own expression unchanged.

“I knew it was only a matter of time before my disappointment of a son joined these criminals. I would say I thought I raised you better than that. But I suppose, what more can I expect from a sodomite?” My father says, looking down at me over his nose. “And they want us to parley with Indians, as well as a _woman?_ What a waste of my time.”

When I glance to my side, I see Victor scowling at my father and the bearded man, the vein in his neck looking as if one more word would make it burst as it carves itself from his flesh. He returns my gaze.

“This woman can blow your brains out. And who are you calling Indians?” Pilar says, withdrawing her gun from her belt and aiming directly at my father’s head.

The sound of steel on steel fills the air as we all withdraw our weapons, brandishing them at the men before us, until I realize each of them has a gun pointed at one of our heads. Now I know why our farewell on the ship was so tense. My blood shocks into action, shooting through my arteries, my heart hammering in my ears and sounding like an underwater drum pounding over and over and over again until I can almost hear nothing else. I look down the barrel of the gun pointed at me and I swallow. The man threatening me is… I remember now. Lamb-face, from the _Kraken’s Spear._

“Put the gun down, Pilar,” Victor says, his voice shaking as he slowly reaches out his hand and presses the top of Pilar’s wrist down, before he adds in Spanish: “ _No estamos aquí para discutir sobre semántica con estos demonios.”_

Gritting her teeth, Pilar complies, returning her gun to its holster. Victor and I sheathe our swords again and hold our hands up in surrender before my father, Lamb-face and the Companyman put away their weapons, too. 

“Perhaps we should all speak the Queen’s tongue, as well. That is, if you can comprehend what it is I am saying. How _uncivilized_...” the Companyman says with a snide smile, earning chuckles from my father and Lamb-face.

“Enough of that,” I say, feeling the heat rising in my face. “What are your terms for the parley? I want to get this over with.”

“The _Kraken_ owes a debt to the Company, as I assume you are aware, for stolen property, and your lot have looted enough of all of our ships that compensation for that property is in order,” my father says, looking bored. “You can either pay the debt and compensation, totaling ten thousand sterling, or you can give us ships, along with the prisoner.”

“And the _Kraken_ wants to be part of the Brethren Court,” says Lamb-face.

“Which prisoner?” Pilar asks, ignoring Lamb-face entirely.

“This one,” Lamb-face says, flicking his chin toward me. I can feel my body begin to shake, my pulse skyrocketing. 

“We did not discuss this previously,” my father says, his eyes widening just a bit, but otherwise, he doesn’t react. “How curious… but I suppose a debt is a debt.”

“You would have them sell me, is that it?” I ask, feeling my rage building further, each word another block in the tower that I intend to raze to the ground. 

When I take a step forward, I feel something stop me; I look down to see Victor’s hand on my chest, holding me back. He shakes his head, pleading silently. I know he’s right; it isn’t worth getting my head blown from my body.

“I cannot intervene in affairs of trade and the economy,” my father says with a shrug. “It is not my place.”

I bite my lip to stop myself from saying anymore, but most importantly, to stop my mouth from quivering as I blink back the tears that threaten to spill over my eyelids. After all, I know he hates me; but I didn’t know just how much.

“Well, that will not do,” Victor says, pulling out a piece of parchment from inside his vest. “These are our demands: absolve the debt and we will close the maelstrom that has destroyed Shipwreck Island, which, as I am sure you all know, is in the middle of a major trade route and part of the reason for you incurring such an enormous debt.”

“We also want Aguey-Cairi to be free of British control and have it known that this is the territory of the Brethren Court. _And_ we want you to forego control on piracy in the Caribbean entirely. Or even better, a ceasefire can be enforced,” Pilar adds.

The three men before us burst into laughter for several moments, and all I can do is raise my eyebrow and look at Victor, who mirrors my expression. 

“Well, I have never heard such ridiculous demands in my life. This is what happens when you negotiate with criminals,” my father says. 

“Speak for yourself,” Pilar says, “I see three criminals before me and none beside me.”

I cannot stop myself from snorting at this. “They may sound ridiculous but they’re better than whatever nonsense your lot have come up with,” I say. “Better to concede and save us all the trouble.”

“But say you _do_ manage to close the maelstrom… how would you do it?” The Companyman asks, stroking his chin.

“You truly believe them?” my father asks with a scoff.

“It’s a secret of the Brethren Court,” I say.

“What about the ceasefire?” Victor asks. “Would that not be beneficial to us all? We can help to repay the debt to the Crown.”

“Give us one moment,” Pilar says, as she grabs Victor and I by the sleeves and drags us aside, before she turns to Victor with a whisper. “Are you _mad_? You want us to become privateers? Listen to yourself.”

“What else do you suggest?” Victor says. “They will not accept our terms.”

“Wait,” I say. “We might have to let the _Kraken_ join the Brethren Court if we want to get anywhere with this. The ceasefire is good for all of us, control over Aguey-Cairi, and… What if we have proof we can close the maelstrom? I mean, it’s closed already, right? And we don’t want to be here all day waiting for a message.”

“We may have to,” Victor says with a sigh. 

“Or we can just kill all of them,” Pilar suggests, earning a glare from Victor and me simultaneously.

“I would prefer for us not to do that,” Victor says.

“I was joking,” Pilar replies, huffing loudly.

“Anyway…” I say, attempting to bring us back to the subject at hand. “Our only option is to show them all of our cards and hope they believe us.”

“Hmm… I think the coloni-- _Benji_ is right,” Pilar says after a moment. 

“And what if that doesn’t work?” I ask.

“We run,” Pilar says.

With a collective sigh, we turn around again. 

“Does it change anything if we have successfully closed the maelstrom?” Victor asks directly, and the three men before us stare at each other incredulously. 

“How could you possibly…?” my father says.

“Check for yourself if you don’t believe us,” I say, smug.

“Here are our new terms…” Pilar says. “We agree to a ceasefire and for the _Kraken_ to join the Brethren Court, and the maelstrom is closed as we said it would be. In exchange we want an erasure of the debt, for control over Aguey-Cairi, and deregulation of piracy. That is our final offer. Or we can open up the maelstrom again.”

“ _No podemos amenazarlos con que abriremos la vorágine cuando no sabemos como se abrió en primer lugar,”_ Victor says to Pilar as the men retreat to negotiate. 

“ _A veces necesitan una patada en el trasero_ ,” she spits back in response. 

After a moment, the men return, and I can see the defeat on my father’s face when he says: “We accept your terms.”

Once they retreat, I fall into Victor’s arms, my tears dotting the sand with little dark circles with the realization that my father is even more of a monster than I thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey all, thanks for tuning into the penultimate installment of this story! I hope you've been enjoying things so far. I want to say once again, thank you to [temporarylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarylove/pseuds/temporarylove) for her continued sensitivity reading and help with this story. I know this chapter was a bit politics-heavy but Benji's father and the strained relationship B has with him was very interesting to write. B's dad deserves a worst father of the year award though because he's just a bad dad and also like... racist and a misogynist. He had the whole horrible package and I'm glad B didn't take after him. I did also really enjoy writing Pilar and Benji's interactions and really love the idea of them getting along. Anyway, I'm curious to hear your thoughts as usual and hope you enjoy Vic's POV... Onward!


	28. Victor Salazar - 11 June, 1787; Isla de la Fuente/Aguey-Cairi

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The _Rainbow Horizon_ receives a parrot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “I know what you two are about to do and I don’t like it,” Pilar says, pulling the brim of her hat down to cover her eyes.
> 
> “Well, you see, Pilar, when two people love each other very much, sometimes one of them puts his--”
> 
> With a feigned shriek of terror that garners Artemisia’s attention, Pilar pretends to cower as she swats at his arm. The little dog scampers over, tilting her head to the side as she stares up at us. 

For the past few days, Benji has not been himself. He cried for a long time after the parley; but I understand why, for I have never seen someone so contemptible that he makes the bastards aboard the  _ Kraken  _ seem angelic and saintly. It worries me greatly when he pushes me away, but I would probably do the same. In the end, though, I would like for him to talk to me. I reassure him that he can tell me what is on his mind, but for now, he seems content being alone. At least he eats, but he seems sullen, exhausted, his eyes sunken and dark, and I imagine he does not sleep a great deal. I would not, either, if I discovered my own father would rather use me as a pawn to pay a debt. 

I do not understand what it is like to have such awful parents, since my own may be godly people but they would never abandon me. That much I know for certain. Even if they would not understand me. Or perhaps they would. But I had always been too afraid of their judgement to be honest with them. It makes me wonder if there is any use in finding them and telling them now. And I wonder, too, if they would like Benji or if they would distrust him the same way Pilar did. Perhaps they would accept it eventually.

On the third day, Benji goes to the upper deck and sits down with Artemisia on his lap, stroking her head as he looks out across the water. I lean against the mast, watching him from afar. As much as my heart clenches in my chest, and as much as I miss holding him in my arms and making love to him, I want him to come to me. And so I wait. Because I know there are some things I cannot fix for him.

When Felix and Andrew appear from below the deck with Jack sitting between them where Andrew has his arm draped around Felix’s shoulder, I greet them with a smile as they approach me for a chat. I had been a bit put off by Andrew at first and had found Felix peculiar but they had quickly become my close friends and confidants. But as I chat to them, my eyes wander to Benji, and I almost feel as if I am excluding him, despite him looking perfectly at ease sitting alone with Artemisia. My gaze meets his; he holds it steady as if we were on the dry earth again. I raise an eyebrow; he nods. And so I approach him with my hands in my pockets.

Benji pats the planks of wood in the space beside him and I sit down with my legs crossed, our knees brushing against each other. We sit together in silence for a moment, before Benji reaches out and takes my hand in his. Electricity courses through my skin from the point of contact.

“Victor…” Benji says, sliding a bit closer to me so our hips touch and our faces float only a few finger’s-lengths away from each other. “I’m sorry I haven’t been talking to you much lately.”

“It is all right,” I say, “I know you have had a lot on your mind. It is… not easy to come to terms with something like that.”

He swallows, scratching Artemisia’s back absently. “It was difficult but… I should be able to rely on you. You’re my partner. If we love each other, I shouldn’t feel like I’m burdening you. But I guess I just… I didn’t know how to articulate how I felt. Honestly, I still don’t. I needed time to be alone to process and I wrote a couple of songs about it but… I may have thrown them all into the sea.”

“Whatever helps you cope,  _ mi amor _ ,” I say, as Benji rests his head on my shoulder and he turns his face to look up at me. “I am sure they were very beautiful, though.”

“Thank you. For taking care of me. For giving me space. And for being so understanding. Also, for not pushing me or trying to take advantage of me. Although I think I have to be more open with you, even if I have to make myself talk to you when I’m not feeling well. Because I don’t want you to worry.”

“Of course, I would never want to force you into anything. And sometimes it can be good to spend some time on your own,” I say, squeezing his hand gently. “But perhaps this can be something we work on together.”

Benji smiles a sad smile but nods nonetheless. “I’d like that. But also… thank you for not suggesting we…  _ fornicate _ . If you had been any other man that would have been your first option.”

“I could not do that to you,” I say, resting my hand on his cheek and stroking it with my thumb. “You are too precious to me.”

Biting his lip, Benji tries and fails to keep his mouth from curling up again, but nonetheless, he leans up and kisses me gently. “You’re precious to me, too. Although right now a good fornicating wouldn’t be so bad.”

Chuckling, I wrap my arm around Benji’s shoulder. Artemisia rises from her perch on his lap, her tail wagging like a little metronome as she hops back onto the deck and bounds across it, leaving us alone. The loud clicking of footsteps startles me, and I look up to see Pilar approaching us. She sits down before us, reaching out and ruffling Benji’s hair. I raise my eyebrow, and Benji mirrors me.

“Glad you’re feeling better, brother,” she says. I cannot help but smile at her, and she returns a ghost of a grin.

“Thanks, but I’m not calling you sister. It’s strange,” Benji says with a chuckle. I hold him tighter.

“Fair enough. But you will. Eventually,” Pilar says with a soft, mischievous laugh. 

“Sure…” Benji says, rising from his spot on the deck. “Anyway, I think I want to go back to my room. Will you join me, my love?” 

“I know what you two are about to do and I don’t like it,” Pilar says, pulling the brim of her hat down to cover her eyes.

“Well, you see, Pilar, when two people love each other very much, sometimes one of them puts his--”

With a feigned shriek of terror that garners Artemisia’s attention, Pilar pretends to cower as she swats at his arm. The little dog scampers over, tilting her head to the side as she stares up at us. 

“Enough of that,” I say, unable to suppress my own chuckle and feeling the heat rising in my cheeks as I interrupt them and rise to my feet, as well. Benji laughs uproariously beside me, doubled over. I take his hand and lead him across the deck.

Suddenly, just alongside us, what looks like a giant red tree shoots out of the water, its branches flailing wildly. When I turn to face it properly, stopping in my tracks, I see that look like giant tentacles with yellow suction cups climbing up them gripping at the side of our ship, making it rock to one side as if it would topple over at any moment. I race back toward the other end and out of its reach, pulling Benji along with me, my blood plummeting through me at inhuman speeds. 

The ship rocks again. And again. And again. It tips, threatening to pull us under once again.

And from the mass of tentacles erupts a figure, somersaulting onto the deck, tails like whips flying behind them. The tentacles recede back into the inkiness of the sea. And the figure stands, taking off their hat to reveal Mia, her hair now braided into long, thin ropes down her back. She looks thin and sullen but otherwise, alive. And dry.

“Ahoy,” she says, nonchalant.

We all stare at her in a stunned silence for a moment as she raises her hand in a short wave. Felix sprints across the deck and knocks on the door to the Captain’s quarters in a staccato rhythm, earning a shout from Lake.

“Leave me be!”

“Captain… you’re going to want to see this… It’s Mia.”

As soon as the word ‘Mia’ leaves Felix’s mouth, a  _ bang  _ echoes like a gunshot and Lake emerges. She turns, sees Mia, and darts toward her, and I watch as she lifts Mia from the deck and twirls around with her in her arms, kissing her as if she had risen from the dead. Perhaps she has. 

We all crowd around her, embracing her until she orders us to step away and let her breathe. I hear Felix yell something about a cake as he sprints to the lower deck. Pilar watches us from a distance, holding a yapping Artemisia in her arms to prevent her from jumping. Mia approaches them, holding her hand out for the little dog to sniff, before she pats her head with a soft smile, and Artemisia quiets. 

“Who’s this little darling?” Mia says, taking Artemisia’s floppy ears between her fingers and wrapping them under her chin gently like a little bonnet.

Pilar eyes her for a moment before she introduces them, and then herself, shaking Mia’s hand with a glint in her irises. As Mia withdraws, I can see her deep-cut black blouse shift a bit, exposing a part of a black circle tattooed over her left breast, right over her heart. 

“All right… let’s go below because I have  _ loads  _ to tell you all. And I’m  _ famished _ ,” Mia says, leading us all downstairs to the kitchen, her braids swishing behind her like a curtain that reaches her waist. 

Felix is in the process of pouring batter into a pan before he shoves it into the oven to bake. He then turns back to the counter, slicing some bread and cured meat and cheeses and putting them on a platter before bringing it and setting it in the middle of the table where we all sit. Lake seems to hang off Mia’s side, her arms wrapped tightly around Mia’s arm as if she were a sloth on a branch. Mia reaches out and takes a slice of bread, butters it, and stacks some meat and cheese on it before taking a bite out of it as we all watch her.

“Tell us everything, my love,” Lake insists, shaking Mia’s arm as her wife chews and holds up a finger indicating that she should wait.

“Lake, let her eat. We’ve had a chance to catch up on our lost meals but I imagine Mia hasn’t,” Andrew replies with a shake of his head. 

“I know, I know. I just want to hear what it was like. Tell us about Calypso. Was she hot? I heard she’s  _ super  _ beautiful. Also, where does she live? Was she friendly? I need to know! Eat faster!” Lake says, and Mia rolls her eyes as she swallows.

“My love, I’m related to her, I won’t call her ‘hot’. But yes, she’s a very beautiful sea goddess,” Mia says before she takes another bite, then swallows quickly. “But there’s something important she told me that I need to tell you all. A mission, if you will.”

“We already know about the curse being broken, by the way,” Benji says from beside me, his hand resting on my lap. “Although I suppose that’s obvious at this point since we’re all eating.”

Mia takes a loud glug of water before she finishes her sandwich, finally curbing her hunger, and then begins to recount her journey. She tells us about how she entered the maelstrom with Davy Jones’s body and the coins, coming across a pit in the middle of the vortex that led to a magma-filled chamber where Calypso sat bleeding out the water that had become the maelstrom and pulled the entirety of Shipwreck Island into the sea. She had sensed her own blood returning to her when Mia arrived, bearing the body of her great-grandfather and the stolen coins. Calypso agreed to allow Mia to repay the blood debt to break the curse of Hernan Cortes and to close the maelstrom but only if she agreed to her proposal. 

“She said ‘Blood of my blood, you must take on the duty of Davy Jones, which was to ferry those who died at sea to the next realm. I will give you the power of the Kraken and access to the other world, as well as the  _ Dutchman _ ’s power in exchange for you breaking the curse and giving me Davy’s body to hold until it decomposes into nothingness,’” Mia said, her tone ominous. “So I said yes. I didn’t have much of a choice.”

“Does that mean… we are undead again?” I ask, raising my eyebrow; I can feel Benji’s fingers digging into my skin.

“Luckily, no,” Mia says, and the entire room sighs in relief. “And my great-grandfather’s broke the ‘ten years at sea’ curse ages ago, so that doesn’t apply anymore, either.”

Felix pulls out the cake from the pan, flipping it over onto a board and cutting it into pieces before he scurries over and places it on on the table, finally sitting down and putting together a meal for himself. He sighs. “Dammit, I was looking forward to that. The being undead thing, that is. Not the ‘ten years at sea’ thing, that sounds brutal.”

“Thank goodness,” Benji breathes. 

“There is one major thing, though,” Mia says, taking a piece of hot cake in her hand. “I may have the  _ Dutchman _ ’s power now, but… Calypso doesn’t know where the ship went. It just… disappeared. So we need to recover it. That’s the only way she will ever know peace.”

Silence falls upon us and we glance at each other with wide eyes. Pilar, who had been quietly listening while petting Artemisia as she sits on her lap, clears her throat. 

“That can only mean one thing,” she says, staring me in the face. “It’s somewhere in the Devil’s Triangle. If Calypso can’t sense it, then it must be in the only place in the sea that is outside of her domain: in the Sea of Monsters.”

“And so that is where we shall go after we know if the Brethren Court accepts our parley terms,” Lake says before nibbling at the still-hot piece of cake she picks up from the table.

“Parley?” Mia asks, a crumb from her own piece of cake sticking to her lip; Lake wipes it away with her finger.

Benji, Pilar and I explain the terms we had drafted at the parley three days ago, and Mia blinks, impressed. 

“Clearly you lot don’t need me around, you’ve managed things fine on your own,” Mia says. 

“It was all thanks to  _ me _ , obviously,” Lake says, tapping her cheek with her finger, and Mia rolls her eyes before planting a kiss there. 

“Ah, yes, I should have known,” Mia says with a smile. “When will you know if the Court has accepted the terms?”

“Well, considering  _ I  _ am the Court, they should have already accepted,” Pilar muses. “But the official parrot should come… soon, I hope.”

Just then, a  _ thunk  _ sounds from the upper deck. Artemisia rises on Pilar’s lap, staring at the ceiling as she barks in quick succession, hackles raised and ears standing at attention. Jack stands on top of Felix’s head, screeching in concert. 

“Allow me,” I say, sprinting from the kitchen and to the upper deck, where a colorful red and green macaw scampers around, a piece of parchment tied tightly to its leg. I remove it and return below, unfurling the paper and reading it. “The Court has accepted.”

The room cheers, and Felix runs over to the counter and reaches underneath, pulling out two bottles of rum and pouring glasses for everyone. We all drink, aside from Benji, who has sworn off any alcoholic beverages for his own sake. 

When I glance through the round windows, I see the sky darken and after my third glass, I lose track of time, my brain becoming foggy as I lay my head on Benji’s shoulder, feeling myself drift out of consciousness. And the last thing I see before my mind slips away is Benji’s face smiling softly down at me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for this update! That means there's only one more installment left of this story, so tune in in a few days for the last two chapters! Thank you so much for reading and I'm curious to hear your thoughts as usual. And thank you once again to [temporarylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarylove/pseuds/temporarylove) for all her help and for sensitivity reading this work! As usual, 1 comment = 1 Venji having a fun adventure out on the high seas. See you in the final update soon!


	29. Benjamin “Benji” Campbell; 20 June, 1787; Somewhere in the Caribbean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew of the _Rainbow Horizon_ meet the Kraken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Because… mm… I just want more.”
> 
> “Let me think about it.”
> 
> Victor wraps his arms around my back and lifts me from the desk. My legs hook to his sides like starfish sticking to the surface of a rock, and I cling to him even tighter, whispering into his ear: “Just get me a ship and I’ll shut up.”

It’s raining today, which isn’t unusual for this time of year, as it marks the beginning of the monsoon season in the area. Which means we’re all in the lower deck taking refuge from the elements. 

And that also means I’m in Victor’s room with him -- more specifically, I’m splayed out on his desk with him leaning over me, my arms wrapped around his neck, our clothes discarded in some corner of our quarters, forgotten, our tongues doing battle or a dance -- perhaps both -- as he grips the undersides of my bare thighs with his huge hands, slick with sweat. It’s nothing too risqué , because as much as I like the pomp and the pain, sometimes doing things the normal way hits the spot -- literally.

Usually, when Victor and I are in the throes of our sessions, I can only focus on him, but my mind has been a bit preoccupied lately. And even though Victor says that if I can still think, he’s not doing his job correctly, sometimes it’s simply my brain’s overactivity that I cannot shut off, and even a good fornicating won’t quiet it. Trust me, I’ve tried. 

“I still don’t understand why you don’t… _ahh…_ want to use Pilar’s connections to get yourself -- and _us_ \-- a ship,” I say, staring up at the ceiling as Victor kisses my neck and moves his hips into me, and I groan softly.

“How many times have I told you that… that does not interest me,” he replies, spreading my legs a bit wider.

“But think about it. We wouldn’t have to answer to anyone, we can make our own rules… _mm…_ we can--” I shudder, my train of thought interrupted by the sensation of pleasure that shoots through my insides, and I pull Victor closer to me. “ _Yes…_ do that again.”

“What else were you going to say? Any new arguments I have not heard before?” he asks me, repeating the same action, and I squirm again. I can feel him grinning against my ear.

“Before you so -- _ugh_ \-- rudely interrupted me, I was going to… _fuck_ … say that I’m tired of listening to Lake and Mia. I want us to… _mm_ … go on our own adventures,” I say, running my hand through Victor’s hair and tugging at it as he quickens his pace.

“How am I interrupting you if you asked me to do it again…?” he says, before he moans quietly, not saying anything for a long moment. “Are you not happy with what we have here?” he finally asks.

“Obviously if I’m asking -- _fuck fuck fuck --_ ” my mind goes blank again, and I ball my fist in his hair, pulling even harder. “I’m not just going to forget about it, you know.”

“Why can you not be... happy... with the _Rainbow Horizon?”_ he asks me, exasperated.

“Because… _mm…_ I just want _more._ ”

“Let me think about it.”

Victor wraps his arms around my back and lifts me from the desk. My legs hook to his sides like starfish sticking to the surface of a rock, and I cling to him even tighter, whispering into his ear: “Just get me a ship and I’ll shut up.”

“If you want a ship… I will get you a ship,” he breathes in response, moving his hips back and then forward, hitting that spot inside me that makes me dig my fingers into his shoulders and my eyes roll back in my head. “Now, please. Stop talking about ships… and enjoy yourself...”

I bite my lip to suppress a moan before I lean down, pressing a kiss to his mouth as he hits that spot again. And again. And again. Until I’m shuddering and coming undone at Victor’s hands, the familiar weight of him over me making me feel small and protected and taken care of -- just how I like it.

 _Yes._ Finally. A ship. And after Victor and I dress ourselves, I grab him by the front of his shirt, giving him a fierce kiss, and all Victor can do is shake his head with a chuckle of defeat when we pull apart.

“Thank you, Sir,” I whisper against his lips. 

“And I hope it makes you happy,” he says with a small smile.

“Not as happy as you make me, but close,” I say, cupping his cheek.

All of a sudden, a _crash_ echoes through the lower deck as the _Horizon_ quakes like a house built directly on an active fault. My pulse reaches a staccato and I tie my sword to my hip as I open the door, only to see a giant hole blown through the wall only a few inches from Andrew’s room. 

We run to the upper deck, where the rain is falling in violent sheets. It’s at this very moment that what looks like a reasonably-sized armada grows on the horizon, surrounding us, led by the ship I hoped to never see again: The _Kraken’s Spear._ The urge to vomit almost overwhelms me but I bite it down. 

In no time at all, several ships have come closer to us, and men begin their process of swinging across the gap between our ships, throwing themselves onto our deck with a stampede of _thumps_ and drawing their weapons, prepared to show us no mercy. Victor and I fall into battle with them, fighting for our lives. I block, parry, swipe and dodge hits as Victor does the same. Mia and Lake and Felix and Andrew join us, swords swinging in concert, and soon, the entire deck is littered with people and slain bodies, a minefield of blood and flesh and bone. I find myself growing exhausted quickly. It seems like the stream of people arriving on our deck is endless; it’s only a matter of time until the weight alone sinks the _Horizon._ We shouldn’t have expected them to honor the terms of our agreement for more than a few days; perhaps it was our mistake that led us here.

“Benji, you remember that proposal you made a few weeks ago?” Victor asks me, sliding beside me as he smacks a sword away and plunges his own cutlass into the rib cage of one of our foes with a sickening _schlick_.

“What about it?” I ask him, blocking and parrying another attack as he does the same, and our swords clang together as we send another foe flying through the air.

“Will you marry me now?” he says, looking into my eyes for a moment just before he flips his sword around and punctures someone who approaches from behind.

“I don’t think now’s the best time,” I say, ducking away from another sword.

“Now may be the _only_ time!” he says, kicking a body away before he returns to me, linking my arm with his. “I love you and I have made my choice. What is yours?”

For a moment, with the sound of guns, swords and waves clamoring around us, I stare at him, realizing he’s right, before I call: “Lake! Marry us!”

“I’m a little busy here,” she shouts back from the helm, thrusting two swords, one in each hand, through foes on either side, skewering them.

“Lake! _Now_!” Victor all but bellows at her over the din. 

We separate for a moment, running to opposite sides of the deck, our cutlasses meeting with those of the _Kraken_ ’s men and others from ships I don’t recognize. I drag my sword across a man’s belly, slicing him open, before kicking him aside. Another lunges at me and I dodge before laying a wicked side-swipe upon him and disposing of him.

At the helm, Lake shoves aside several enemy combatants and says “Fine!” before she climbs atop the platform. She announces: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…”

“Benjamin Campbell, do you take me to be your husband?” Victor asks me, standing behind me and gazing at me as if the rest of the world, the chaos and fighting and death all around us, doesn’t exist for that moment. 

“I do,” I breathe. 

“Brilliant,” Victor says, spinning around before slashing several men through the face, as I hop over a sword aimed at my middle and lunge, before returning to his side, joining our hands.

“Victor Salazar, do you take me…” I say, as Victor pulls me by the hand, twirling us around so we switch places on the deck, as I clash swords with two men, “to be your husband,” we switch places again, our hands still joined, as we knock off even more attackers, “in sickness and in health,” Victor stands behind me with his hand round my waist after our hands part for a moment, piercing another foe straight through the chest as he approaches within inches of me, as I jam my sword into another, “with health being the less likely?” I finish, as he kicks the dead man backward and returns to my side. 

“I do,” Victor says, and I can tell with the steadiness of his gaze and the clarity of his words that he means it. I can’t stop the unconscious flick upward my lip does upon hearing him say this aloud.

Our hands find each other again as we drive our cutlasses through more foes, whose bodies drop to the deck with loud _thumps._ Victor rests his hand on my back as we duck forward to avoid two hulking men on either side of us side-swiping at us. Our arms rejoin once more as we lunge in opposing directions, barreling through two more men and skewering them. The area around us has cleared for a moment, and only we remain, linked together with one pair of arms, our cutlasses dangling in the others, dripping with blood, rain and seawater. 

Lake, who is in the midst of fighting off two attackers simultaneously on both sides, says: “As Captain, I now pronounce you…” she pauses, grabbing a man by the hair and gouging his eyes out on the ship’s wheel, as Victor and I, with our arms linked, jam our swords through two more foes, “you may kiss…” Lake pauses again, pulling out her gun from her belt and firing it directly in another man’s face as she laughs maniacally.

With that, Victor rests his hand in the middle of my back as he leans forward, dipping me back, and on instinct, I wrap my free arm around his neck and my sword arm around his back, pulling his face closer to mine as our wet hair clings to our foreheads. Just as our lips are about to connect, Victor raises his sword toward a foe when he runs up behind us and side-swipes, as I lunge and parry. 

Leaping off the platform, Lake kicks a man in the chest and says again: “You may kiss…” before crossing her swords as she blocks a downward stroke. Victor slices a man across the belly, and I take a blow to the face that sends me reeling for a moment before I twirl and instinctively block another man. Lake shrieks: “Just _kiss_!”

I look ahead to see that the man I had blocked is in fact Victor, and I grab him by the wrist of his sword arm, drawing him closer to me as he rests his hand on my back again, and I cup his cheek, gazing into his deep brown irises and seeing his adoration for me reflected in them. Finally, our lips press together. The world melts away and time itself stands still; all I can think of is Victor and his warm body pressed flush against mine like coral to the reef that stretches across the Caribbean, the deluge engulfing us as our tongues brush against one another. Victor has kissed me many times before, but somehow this time feels different. And I would never have imagined that I would ever in my life be a married man; but now I am. 

We pull away, still in our own world as we stare into each other’s eyes for a moment longer, before more foes fly onto the deck from the ships surrounding us, rolling in with swords brandished as the ship rocks to the side, taking cannon fire to the hull. I almost lose my balance, but Victor’s body against me holds me steady. 

Above us, I see Mia performing a balancing act atop the highest sail while in the throes of battle with another enemy. She seems composed, barely losing her footing and continuing her barrage with one arm behind her back as she twirls her sword before lunging forward, almost landing a hit but just barely missing. On the opposite side of the deck, Felix and Andrew are also in the midst of battle, their backs pressed together as they circle around, knocking out men with ease. Even Felix is competent with a sword when his life is in danger.

My heart is beating wild, erratic in my chest cavity, and I gulp as more of our foes press around us, shoving me and Victor so that our backs press together, too, as we circle, surrounded. From the sky, something large and heavy falls at our feet with a _thump_ and I look up to see Mia staring down at us with a grin before she grabs a rope and slides back down to the deck. The _Horizon_ takes another round of cannon fire; I’m not sure how many more it can take before it goes under -- and for good this time. 

I block and parry a volley of strikes, the sound of metal on metal beginning to grate on my eardrums. Victor’s back on mine feels like a spectre of warmth that I can always return to for safety, even as I dodge a lunge and knock a foe in the face with my fist. From the corner of my eye, I see Mia approaching, cutting down men in her way, their swords bouncing off some invisible force, unable to ever touch her. She skewers three of them at once with a grin before she pulls out her cutlass and a fountain of blood squirts all over the pale boards of the deck, reminding me of our battle on the white, sandy beach of Shipwreck Island. 

“Is this the ship that took you from Port Royal?” Mia shouts over the sounds of shrieks and swords as she joins us.

“It is,” I say.

“The only way to destroy a monster is with a bigger monster. And we will kill every last one of these men and deliver them to the other realm ourselves,” she replies, touching her pendant. Mia side-swipes, clearing out several foes, before she climbs up atop the platform, raising her sword, and shouts: “Unleash the Kraken!”

For a long moment, the only thing that happens is that everyone on the deck pauses mid-battle, glancing around and falling silent. The deck shakes and shakes and soon, the familiar looking branches rise from the water, grabbing at bodies, crushing them and then flinging them into the sea one by one. Mia smirks, watching, and I cannot help but feel a sense of satisfaction and possibly even… _relief_? wash over me as the deck empties, our foes erupting into shrieks of terror as they die.

Another barrage of cannonballs rips through the hull, knocking us off balance once again. Mia grabs the wheel to right us, trying to turn it, but it locks in place. Her eyebrows knit together as she makes another attempt. I swallow, running over to help her, but our strength combined does nothing. One more blow punches through our crooked ship, a high-pitched shriek cuts the air, and the ground comes out from underneath us as the Kraken’s arms pull the _Horizon_ into the sea, collapsing it like a house made of skinny, dry twigs.

I scream as the water engulfs me and I flail my arms to find something, _anything_ to grab onto, to give me some semblance of stability, so I don’t feel like I’m drifting in the middle of a void, my stomach threatening to drop out of me. My hand latches onto a floating piece of wood, and I scramble onto it. When I see Mia and Victor floating not far from me, I breathe a sigh of relief. Felix, Andrew and Lake approach us, and in the background, the Kraken makes its way to the ship of its namesake, instantly crushing the vessel and consuming everything -- and _everyone --_ onboard. It then continues its merciless tirade, pulling down several more ships until there are none left in the vicinity, before it disappears back into the depths from whence it came.

Lake and Mia look on solemnly as they hook onto one another, and I know it’s because they had just lost their child. Victor hangs off the side of the surface I’m sitting on, and I try not to stare at the water too long, because I can feel my insides shaking and roiling about and I know I will expel their contents in a moment if I do. Instead, I close my eyes, trying to think of the beach, the ground, the land, _anything_ solid to get my mind off the sensation of the waves rocking me about in the middle of the _fucking_ water.

“ _Mi amor_ ,” Victor says gently, taking my hand in his own and kissing it. “Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

“Please just… hold my hand, my love,” I say, cursing myself for the way the panic tinges at the edge of my words. But I know Victor won’t judge me; he simply holds my hand as I ask.

“I don’t know why the Kraken did that,” Mia says a bit away from me, but I don’t bother opening my eyes to see where she’s gone. “If I’m meant to have control over it, then… perhaps the fact that I don’t have control over the _Dutchman_ is why it turned on the _Horizon._ I suppose we’re lucky it didn’t eat _us_ …”

The thought makes me shiver even harder. Victor rubs his fingers over my knuckles and takes my other hand in his own, bringing both of them to his lips. His moustache tickles my fingers and I giggle, distracted for a moment.

“You couldn’t have known,” Lake reassures her. “At least we won’t be in any situations where we’ll need to use it again… What do we do now?”

“Hey, look over there. Is that… the _Victory?”_ Felix says, and I cannot help but open my eyes, looking off into the dim orange and red sky as the sun begins to set.

Surely enough, the familiar silhouette of _Sappho’s Victory,_ with its three enormous sails of red and black and the bust of a winged woman sitting above the bowsprit, drifts toward us like a dark angel sent from the heavens, followed by the _Victory’_ s many allies. When it arrives, it drops its ropes and we board, greeted by the Captain herself and little Artemisia running circles around us. 

My feet touch the solid surface of the ship and I can breathe again. Victor wraps his arm around my shoulder, holding me close. Even though I know my life debt will never be paid -- no matter how many times Victor tells me to forget about the debt; I love him in spite of it -- with him by my side, I finally feel at peace, enveloped by the soft glow of the sunlight on a cloudless day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the final batch of updates for this story... I'll post a more extensive note in the final chapter but thank you again for reading and sticking with this story until the end. Also, once again, thank you to[temporarylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarylove/pseuds/temporarylove) for her wonderful work in sensitivity reading and just generally being an amazing human being (and also drawing me some freaking AWESOME fanart). Anyway, onto the final chapter, which is from Vic's POV... Also, rip to the _Rainbow Horizon_ , she will be missed. Put an F in the comments for her. And if you can name the scene that inspired the Venji wedding scene I will know that we are on the same wavelength bc it's one of the most romantic scenes I've ever seen!!!!!


	30. Victor Salazar; 30 July, 1787; The Devil’s Triangle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor and Benji join the search for the _Flying Dutchman_ in the Devil's Triangle.
> 
> or
> 
> Venji sail off into the sunset.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “You’ve been staring at this thing for ages,” he says.
> 
> “Well…I _may_ have finally figured out how it works,” I say with a smile, wrapping my arm around Benji’s back.
> 
> “Oh, _have_ you now?” he asks, doing the same to me.
> 
> “Aye, it shows you--”
> 
> “Captain Salazar?” a voice interrupts us as our first mate, Kieran, jogs up the stairs with a piece of parchment in hand.

After the _Horizon_ was lost at sea, Benji and I became the captains of our own ship, _Hyacinth’s Dagger_ , the name of which is another one of his cheeky, euphemistic inventions, which I suppose is a fitting title for us, in the end. After we reach an island whose name I forget in the pirate territory of the Caribbean, we make the acquisition and say farewell to the deck of _Sappho’s Victory_ \-- at least, for a moment. Finally, equipped with a proper crew, we begin our journey to explore the area of the Devil’s Triangle in order to recover the _Dutchman_. 

It is our first night aboard _Hyacinth’s Dagger,_ and it still feels strange and unfitting for us to have the captain’s quarters to ourselves. We now have not one but _two_ windows, one on each end of the room, along with a much larger desk under one window, a massive wardrobe in the middle of the wall, a table with some chairs in the corner, and a night table, along with a bed large enough to fit several people in it that takes up most of the surface area of the room. I cannot imagine why we would need all this furniture; the rooms we had on the _Horizon_ were large enough and had all the furniture I could need. But I also must admit that, upon giving it more thought, the prospect of being able to sleep with my legs stretched out and not pulled up to my chest _does_ sound appealing...

However, aside from our standing, we had even managed to acquire some of our own wealth, which we keep stashed in the desk and share, of course. As with everything, we always share. But none of the wealth and property in the world is as important to me as being able to wake up beside the love of my life as I watch his shoulder rise and fall with his breath, as I listen to the slow, continuous beating of his heart that reminds me of a wardrum, as I feel his body warm and alive and human against my own. He has helped me make peace with myself, and even though I know he feels indebted to me, I remind him every day that it should be _I_ who feels indebted to him. All this talk of debt can blind a man to the pleasure and trust and companionship that should accompany being in love; I do not want either of us to lose sight of that.

As the _Dagger_ cuts through the water, rocking gently in tune with the waves, we lay together, acclimating to our new surroundings. The sun has set, and we have lit our oil lamps for the night, which cast long shadows across the wall like welcome guests watching over us in silence. 

“I love that we have so much space now,” Benji says, as he threads his fingers through my hair. “But I still didn’t hear a ‘thank you’ for coming up with the idea. If it weren’t for me, we would still be sleeping in those tiny beds like the ones on the _Horizon.”_

He stretches his arms and legs out as wide as he can like a star on the bed and he giggles when there is still plenty of space leftover on both sides. I turn my head to look at him from my place on his sternum, taking his hand gently and pulling it back toward me as I extend my legs, and somehow only my feet dangle off at the corner. When he returns to playing with my hair, I close my eyes, a contented smile stretching across my lips. 

“And who was the one who procured the ship in the first place?” I ask, chuckling at his antics. 

“Hm, you got me there,” he says, running his fingers down from my hair to my face, rubbing his knuckles against my facial hair. 

“That is what I thought,” I say, before I rise from Benji’s chest and lie down beside him, propping my head up on my hand and staring down at him.

When Benji rolls over on his side, he buries his face in my chest, and I can feel the soft tickle of his breath against my skin as it slides through the material of my shirt. I brush his hair from his face and he wraps his arm loosely across my back; I cannot help but smile, the pit of my stomach feeling warm, and my instinct to protect him burning through me like a fire set to the jungle as part of the regular maintenance of the flora.

“We should christen this new room,” Benji says after a moment, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively as he looks up at me in the dimness before he adds: “... _Sir._ ”

“How do you suggest we do that?” I ask, playing along, although I should know by now that he will not actually put any thought into it, but pretend to do so until I answer my own question. 

He toys with my sleeve, lip caught between teeth as he thinks, our silver wedding bands clicking as they slide against each other. I stroke his hair, glancing down at him through my lower lashes. In moments like these, when we are alone, I cannot help but notice how delicate he looks, even with the heavy chiaroscuro draped about us, and how he lets his guard down completely. When I tip his chin up and kiss him softly, he lets out a cute little noise of surprise but kisses back eagerly. 

“I wasn’t done thinking,” Benji says with a pout when we pull away.

“Then let me think for you,” I say, sitting up and pulling him toward me by the hair. “Come here and suck me off, _mi amor_. But first, I want everything off you so I can admire my property.”

With a shudder and a sigh of relief, Benji smiles a gentle smile as he disrobes, averting his gaze before he sits in front of me and begins undoing my trousers as I gently massage his leg. He leans down and I feel him around me, warm and wet. I brush his hair from his forehead so I can watch him work, and my nails dig into the palm of my other hand, undoubtedly leaving behind deep red crescents now that the curse no longer afflicts us.. 

“Touch yourself for me, _mi amor_ ,” I say, my mind becoming progressively hazier as he looks up at me with wide eyes and complies.

My eyelids flutter closed and I bite my fist to block out a groan, but Benji moans loudly around me. I open my own eyes again, panic flooding my senses; there is no telling how others will react to hearing us in the midst of our passion at this hour.

“What if the rest of the crew hears you being so lewd? They may not respect your authority after that...” I scold him as he sits up to look at me directly. 

“Why? Because I let you do what you please with me? Is that it?” he retorts, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Don’t _you_ respect me?”

“Of _course_ I respect you,” I say, cupping his cheek. “But that does not mean others will be as understanding about this as I am.”

“Perhaps. But _you_ are also the only man I will submit to and the only one whose opinion concerns me. No one else deserves it from me. Only you,” Benji says with a sigh. “I can be on my knees with your cock in my throat and _they_ still have to call me Captain.”

“Hmm… I suppose you have a point,” I say, pulling Benji toward me by his chin, kissing him and tasting myself on his tongue. “In that case, I want to try something… Let me be on the receiving end this time.”

“O-oh. Are you sure? I mean… I don’t know if I’ll be any good, but I would love to try,” he says, as I wrap my arms around his back and pull him on top of me, allowing him to sit between my legs.

“Try your best, I know you can do it,” I say with a smile as I spread my legs apart to accommodate him. 

Benji smiles softly as he leans down to kiss me, and I cannot help but groan into his mouth as he prepares me, slowly and thoroughly, the strong scent of coconut oil the only thing able to at least mildly distract me from the experience. There is something even more intimate about Benji and I switching positions than I expect, and even though I trust him completely, I cannot release the rigidity from my body; it clings to me, a tough exoskeleton that I cannot shed from my form, as I realize I need to give up some control. 

But my nails dig into his back instead; I am waiting for these sensations to become pleasurable but for now, they are simply strange. Aside from the occasional brush of a spot within me that makes me squirm, I find the act of lying down and simply having things done to me, submitting to someone else’s ministrations and placing myself in such a vulnerable position like a crab that has just moments ago exited its shell to find a new one, to be less enjoyable than I had hoped. But I want to understand it.

“You need to relax… Sir,” Benji says gently before he kisses my neck, and I shut my eyes tightly. He is right. “It won’t feel good if you’re so tense.”

I slow my breathing and watch him gazing at me, feeling scrutinized, attempting to put myself in Benji’s position. He removes his fingers, kissing me softly, before he adjusts my hips and moves himself into me. I cover my eyes with the back of my hand as I feel tears prick at the corners from the discomfort -- not pain, necessarily, but it certainly has yet to be satisfying. 

“Are you all right?” he asks me, stilling himself as he removes my hand from my face and cups my cheek again. 

“Aye... Although I am curious about when this is meant to become pleasurable for me,” I say with a chuckle.

“If you want me to, I can stop, Sir,” he says. 

“No. Not yet... Perhaps a little bit more. You can move,” I say, pulling him down to me by the hair so I can kiss him. 

He hums, doing as I ask, and I let my eyes flutter closed, making my most concerted effort to release my need to be more active and instead, allow Benji to please me. Perhaps I can see how this would be enjoyable for many people, including for Benji. But that discomfort, along with the throbbing sensation between us, continues to grate at me. He moves slowly for my sake, his movements clumsy and a bit sloppy, and I can tell he is making his best attempt, as well. 

“ _Mercy_ ,” I finally say, before gritting my teeth. As I knew he would, Benji stops, removing himself from me. “You did well, _mi amor._ But that is not my preferred way for us to do this.”

“Oh, thank goodness, I hated it, too,” Benji breathes in relief. “But I’m so glad we tried. It was… enlightening.”

“It was. Thank you,” I say, kissing him gently, before I deepen the kiss, grabbing hold of Benji’s hair at the roots and feeling him moan into my mouth. “Did you prepare yourself?” I ask.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Good boy. Turn around, then,” I say, and he does as he is told. Then I kiss the spot between his shoulder blades as I press him forward slowly until the side of his face and his chest rest against the bed, and I take hold of his wrists, folding them across his back as I slide into him with a groan. Benji gasps softly.

“See how tight that is?” He teases with a breathy chuckle as he takes me in. 

“Mhm,” I say, leaning over to kiss him before I make him moan loud enough to wake the rest of the crew, but this time, I do not pay the noise any mind and I let Benji have his fun.

And then when I have him on his back so I can properly look at him while I make love to him, watching the way his face contorts as he locks eyes with mine, I lace our fingers together on both sides of his head pressing him down into the mattress with whispered “I love you”s against each other’s lips and he comes undone in my hands again. I will never tire of the way he looks at me in those moments, knowing that I am the only one who he will ever trust to see in that state, when he is at his most vulnerable, because he trusts and understands that I will never harm him. 

Once we finish and I have cleaned us both up, I extinguish the lamps and return to bed, where Benji awaits me, curling up against me under the covers. As my eyes fall shut, I inhale Benji’s scent, salty and musky and coconutty, realizing how much I had learned about myself these past few months, and I smile, holding him close to me until our breaths even out and we fall into a deep slumber.

The next morning, we peel ourselves out of the comfort of our bed after having the most restful sleep we have had in a long while. But the prospect of leaving the warmth of our peaceful little paradise is not one I look forward to. 

Before we leave our quarters to sort our duties, I take Benji by the arm, twirling him around and pressing my lips to his. I back him into the wall as he grips my face and pulls me closer to him, before we part, panting and gazing into each other’s eyes as the sunlight shines in through the window and illuminates the air between us. Biting his lower lip to suppress a smile, Benji strokes my cheek as I open the door and swat his behind to usher him out onto the deck and he chuckles as he exits.

As I go to close the door, my foot taps against something, emitting a _clack_ on contact. I raise my eyebrow as I glance down only to see a black box lying before me on the deck. When I pick it up, I open it to inspect it. A compass. It makes a half-turn before pointing beside me. 

“Did you drop this?” I ask Benji as I approach, offering it to him. 

“No,” he says, taking it in his hand for a moment and turning it around before he returns it to me. I shrug before I put it in my pocket. 

The rest of the morning goes by quickly and I forget about the compass for some time, until I shove my fist in my pocket once again, feeling the familiar weight and smoothness against my skin. I withdraw it, examining it more closely as I stand at the wheel of the ship. 

“I still don’t know what this compass is supposed to do,” Benji says as he stands before me, staring at with a raised eyebrow, before he takes it from my hand and smacks it on the side. It makes a partial revolution before stopping and pointing directly ahead of him. “It must be broken. We’re going east.”

He takes a step forward and shoves it against my chest. I hold it, flipping it around in my own hands, as well. I see the tiny signature on the underside, a _J.S._ scratched into the black paint that flakes off the sides. When I right it, opening it again as I rest my forearm on the edge of the wheel, I see it drift slowly to the side. I glance up. Benji strides across the deck, the tails of his coat flapping in the wind. Squinting, I raise the compass to eye-level and follow Benji’s movement; the needle on the compass follows him, as well.

There was something I heard about long ago, about a magical compass that shows you… I do not remember what exactly, but I _have_ heard of it. And the initials seem familiar, yet at this moment, I cannot recall why. But as I have seen, there are always millions of possibilities. I have seen the legends come to life before my very eyes and I trust those same organs to show me what is true. 

For a moment, I watch the compass and Benji from afar, before I pocket it with a sigh and descend from the helm, grabbing one of the crew members and setting him before the wheel in my place. _Sappho’s Victory_ flanks us on the starboard side as we cut through the water. Pilar raises her hand in greeting with a nod as the sky begins to darken, and she looks strangely in her element as an orange streak splits the black clouds in two. Mia and Lake, still grieving the loss of the _Horizon_ , flash us somber smiles from the deck of the _Victory_. 

Our ships draw closer to the massive, jagged, iron-laced rocks like mountains protruding from the water, a minefield surrounded by the remnants of the hundreds of vessels that have approached this spot only to crash and sink before arriving at their destinations. 

I gulp as we just narrowly avoid any obstacles, entering the area that breaks compasses and ships all at once. Even the air smells of sulfur; I wonder if we are entering the gates of Hell. It will take us years to search this place to find the _Dutchman_. I remove the compass from my trousers again as Benji approaches me. Instead of revolving over and over without direction, it points ahead.

“You’ve been staring at this thing for ages,” he says.

“Well…I _may_ have finally figured out how it works,” I say with a smile, wrapping my arm around Benji’s back.

“Oh, _have_ you now?” he asks, doing the same to me.

“Aye, it shows you--”

“Captain Salazar?” a voice interrupts us as our first mate, Kieran, jogs up the stairs with a piece of parchment in hand.

“What is it?” Benji and I say simultaneously, and I shake my head with a smile.

“We received a message from an… ‘Alice Campbell’?” Kieran says and he holds out the parchment. Benji snatches it from his hand.

“Thank you,” Benji says. “You’re dismissed.”

As Kieran leaves, I turn to him and watch as he balls up the parchment and tosses it into the sea.

“You do not want to… read it?” I ask him, leaning over the railing to watch as the water claims the letter.

“No. I’ve no use for my family anymore. And as much as I love my mother… she can sod off,” he says, leaning beside me so our arms touch. “I wrote to her in a moment of weakness. When I still cared about whether my family loves me or not. But now I... don’t.”

“A bit harsh, but fair,” I say, reaching out to grasp his chin and turn his face to me. “And I must say, I still cannot get used to you going by ‘Captain Salazar’. You did not need to change your name for me. After all, you are not truly my property.”

“I know. But I did it for myself. Anything I can do to disassociate from my family, I’ll do it,” he says, placing his hand over mine as he stares into my eyes. “Still, it doesn’t matter, because I would much rather be associated with you, because you’re so much better than them… And I don’t know how, but you always know exactly what I need... I love you, Victor.”

Regardless of how many times I hear him say it, the words still have a way of making my insides melt together like the roiling magma under the ocean in the Ring of Fire. When his face tinges pink, I realize he feels the same. I would hope so; after all, we are married, even if god may not have been there to witness it. And so I capture his lips with my own, closing the gap between us. My hand trails down from Benji’s face to his neck, where the silver pendant I had given him as a wedding gift dangles between us.

A loud _bang_ echoes off in the distance as we separate, and I remember the compass in my hand. I know that words will never be able to capture the depth of what I hope to convey to him, the foreign tongue already clipping my ability to be truly understood by others. And even Spanish and Taino will not do it justice, either. I want to show him fully, but our audience limits us, as well. And so I take Benji in my arms, cradling him against my heart as it beats in a rhythm with the waves and say:

“I love you, too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... that was the final chapter of this story. I hope you enjoyed the journey all over the Caribbean and beyond with the crew of the _Rainbow Horizon_ because I had a lot of fun working on this project through the month of November. I want to thank you once again for reading and giving me your feedback, as well as for supporting me. Also, I want to thank [temporarylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/temporarylove/pseuds/temporarylove) ONCE AGAIN for being so brilliant and helpful; without her, this project wouldn't be what it is and would probably be much messier haha. Anyway, I really appreciate you all and hope you'll read and enjoy my other works, too. And finally, I'm looking forward to hearing what you thought of this. Perhaps there is more in store... I won't make any promises but we shall see... Anyway, hope the rest of your day is good and I hope you were satisfied with the ending and also I hope perhaps you learned some things because I definitely did while doing research for this story. Finally, 1 comment = 1 Venji and Lia and Fandrew and Pilar and her wife all sailing off into the sunset and having fun adventures for the rest of time!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I know this is very different from a lot of the content in the fandom but I hope you found it interesting. Looking forward to hearing what you think about this project.


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